A Thorium Grand Plan

There is properly speaking no Thorium Grand Plan, but an ongoing discussion of a thorium grand plan has continued on the Energy from Thorium Discussion pages for about two and a half years. The "Thorium Grand Plan" discussion was initially inspired by A Solar Grand Plan, an article that appeared in the January 2008 Scientific American. Anyone interested in post-carbon energy planning should read the Grand Solar plan along with the 720 comments that followed . The Grand Solar Plan itself turned out to be something of a fiasco, as an examination of the comments would reveal.

In order for any solar energy scheme to work on a 24 hour a day basis, there would have to be a massive amount of overnight energy storage. The Grand Solar Plan suggested that air could be compressed and stored for night time recovery in caverns, and then recovered to drive turbines to generate electricity. "Dan M. " commented,

COMPRESSED AIR STORAGE
When I read the proposal concerning the use of compressed air for energy storage, I spent a bit of time double checking my understanding. The reason for this was that I remembered that underground storage of compressed air typically needed relatively large spaces to work quickly and efficiently. I looked up a couple of sources (1)(2), and found information that was consistent with what I recalled.

The first think I wish to point out is the high temperature of the compressed air calculated in the first reference. In a salt cavern, this is acceptable, because the volume of the gas is large, the thermal contact is only at the walls of the cavern, and salt, IIRC, is a decent insulator.

Now, contrast that to storage in a porous formation. Most porosity that I've observed is fairly small grain porosity. One way to think of it is to think of sandstone as sand that has been subjected to significant pressure so that it is pressed together to form a rock. Think of the size of the grains of the sand and you get a feel for the size of the pore spaces in a typical sandstone

Given this, what happens when hot air is put in contact with the sand. Even at 70 bar (the storage density mentioned in the first reference), the density of the air is still in the 0.01 g/cc range. Contrast that to the sandstone matrix density of 2.65 g/cc, or the limestone matrix density of 2.71 g/cc. It is true that, gram per gram, the heat capacity of the air is higher, but it's only about 25% higher than limestone, so the relative masses of the air and the matrix rock (e.g. limestone, sandstone, & dolomite) is about 1 to 800 or so. Given this, the heat capacity of the rock per cm of rock/stored air is about 500x that of the air. Thus, the compressed air will lose a significant amount of its energy heating the rock⬦particularly with typical grain sizes.

If you look at my first two references, you will see specific mention of the limited availability of suitable locations for downhole compressed air storage. The quick calculation I gave indicates one of the reasons for this.

The second problem with typical formations is the speed at which the gas can be withdrawn. If you look at the DOE's discussion of natural gas storage(3), you'll see a reference to the advantage of caverns for quick retrieval. The permeability of the formation has a tremendous influence on the speed at which the natural gas can be withdrawn. Obviously, the permeability of a cavern is near infinite. Other formations have lower permeability. If it is low enough, the oil and gas in the rock cannot be accessed. Even when it is suitably high, the process takes a matter of years in most cases of oil and gas wells.

Obviously, storage of natural gas for the winter season uses formations with better permeability than this. Still, it would be quite acceptable to have a natural gas reservoir that would take 60 days to draw down. That would not be acceptable for compressed air. It is true that the air will flow faster, but there would still be energy lost as the hot air travels through the narrow pore spaces.

So, if one is to propose compressed air for the storage of massive amounts of energy (say in the range of 100-200 billion kWh), one needs to determine energy loss for the technique in available formations, as well as the total of available formations. Nothing I've seen about this technique indicates that the US has sufficient available suitable formations to handle this.

(1) http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~matti/ise2grp/energystorage_report/node7.html
(2) http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/aest/pubs/aest-review.pdf
(3) http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/natgas/storagebasics.pdf

"Dan M's" is right, compressed air energy storage has many practical problems, that are unlikely to be completely resolved. The compressed air energy solution so highly touted three years ago, has over the last couple of years largely slipped out of the energy discussion.

In a later comment, "Dan M" stated,

I think that the foundation of our disagreement is that I don't think that we now know the best path, or the true cost of various paths.

"ShermanDorn" pointed to the last statement and announced,

Bingo. I'm not an historian of science and technology, but I had to brush up on that literature for a class I was teaching this semester, and this article strikes me as one of those arguments for massive infrastructure development based on fragile assumptions. Invest in renewables, absolutely! Commit billions on a specific strategy, no way!

To their credit, plan authors, Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis, stuck around and offered defenses of their assertions. "DanM" noted their professionalism and commented,

I appreciate your willingness to enter the dialog concerning your proposal with the general public. I also appreciate your willingness to take counter proposals and perceived difficulties as good faith arguments by those who also want to see a solution to the problem of greenhouse gasses as well as the geopolitical difficulties inherent in the transfer of large amounts of money to unstable and unelected governments. . . .

OK, so let me go on to discussing my position/y'alls responses. It appears to me that you have come to the conclusions that the only way to significantly reduce and eventually eliminate the reliance on oil and coal is to convert to solar power. I see that there are a number of possible solutions that are not simply niche players. They include:

1) Wind
2) Sequestering
3) Solar
4) Nuclear Fusion
5) Nuclear Fission . . .

As for nuclear power, the anti-nuclear movement has succeeded in adding tremendous costs to nuclear power in the US. The fact that other countries are planning/building nuclear power plants without the massive (in terms of the total cost/price) subsidies that are given to wind power and solar power throughout the world indicates that nuclear power is more than cost competitive with wind and solar on a level playing field.

So, in conclusion, I think that there are a number of things we can do to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The most cost effective immediate thing we can do is choose nuclear power as a replacement for proposed coal plants. Subsidized wind comes next in cost effectiveness. Solar power is one of a number of definate maybes for a long term solution. I think we should explore all of these, without choosing one prematurely.

Once again "Dan M" put his finger on a major problem, the existence of competing alternative solutions that cannot and should not be ruled out from further consideration. Unfortunately the discussion was breaking down at this point, because the plan authors chose to engage in a broad, demagogic, and highly irrational attack on nuclear power, repeatedly mentioning the word "Chernobyl" as if the very word were an argument.

The word "Chernobyl," coming from plan authors was enough to signify the end of serious dialogue on the Solar Grand Plan, and that plan authors were unwilling to allow a dispassionate discussion of the relative merits of solar and nuclear oriented plans to take place. My assessments of the relative costs and difficulties of solar and nuclear power, assessments that has been repeatedly supported by similar assessments on Brave New Climate, and Masterresources, indicate that the cost of the GSP would be several times higher than the cost of a full scale nuclear deployment.

Shortly after the publication of the Grand Solar Plan, the then 58 member of the Energy from Thorium community embarked on an ambitious project to create a Grand Thorium Plan.

Klaus Allmendinge suggested,

Seeing the popularity of the SciAm Solar Grand Plan article in the blogosphere, I think it is high time that Kirk and others on this forum launch a "Thorium Grand Plan" article in SciAm.

Apparently SciAm is widely read in political circles as well. It would provide a good forum to introduce the concepts shown on this site.

As regards the SGP, I think it is so full of holes, it sinks before a first penny is spent. Just the infrastructure requirements (DC-AC, AC-DC inverters, bus bars and such) to interconnect that large an array would probably exceed the cost of the solar cells themselves, no matter how cheap. Add to that the real cost of the compressed air storage and its additional energy requirements (read natural gas), and there should be no question. I read the entire discussion on the SciAm web-site.

This was the launching point of the Thorium Grand Plan in Late January 2008. At present there are 547 comments on the TGP topic. In addition, many of my posts on Nuclear Green are intended to contribute toward the development of a Thorium Grand Plan. Despite this significant amount of work, a Thorium Grand Plan has yet to emerge. Indeed there are questions about the necessity of such a plan for the near future.

Yet elements of a plan do exist. There is a clear LFTR deployment plan for the United States, or more accurately some alternative deployment plans. The basic outline of the deployment plan is to build small ~100 to 250 kWe LFTRs in factories, transport them in several sections to home locations for final set up. Recycle coal fired power plants when possible. House the LFTRs underground if physically and economically feasible. Start the LFTRs with U-235 from American Bomb stockpiles, or with Reactor Grade Plutonium from the "spent nuclear fuel" from Light Water Reactors. Make efficient use of the heat produced by the MSRs/LFTRs. This includes using top, middle and bottom work cycles. For example, using the top heat (up to 1200 C) for industrial process purposes, using the rejected heat from the top cycle for electricity generation, and then using the rejected heat from electrical generation for desalinization or for district heating or cooling. MSRs/LFTRs do not have to be reserved for base load electrical production. If the capital costs can be made low enough, and the MSR/LFTR operations made sufficiently efficient, they do not have to be confined to base load generation. MSRs/LFTRs can operate on an intermediate, load following basis, say for 16 hours a day. During those periods of time when electricity demand drops, the intermediate load reactors can switch to hot salt production. The hot salt can be stored, and then used to provide electricity through dedicated, low cost, thermal air or gas turbines, during periods of peak demand. Alternatively the intermediate load LFTR can be shut down using the LFTRs negative coefficient of reactivity. This would put the LFTR on reserve standby, from which status it can be quickly brought back to electrical production, should the situation demand it.

The incomplete thorium Grand Plan has identified the existence of sufficient accessible global thorium resources to keep a high energy thorium based economy going for millions of years. Thus the thorium based economy is sustainable. In addition, the LFTR answers all of traditional environmentalists objections to nuclear energy. It is safe, it does not produce long lived actinides, the most feared component of nuclear waste, and depending on its design, the LFTR will produce a tiny amount of nuclear waste, than will be dangerous for at most 300 years. Yet it is entirely possible that with the LFTR there will be no nuclear waste at all, and that everything that comes out of the LFTR as "spent fuel products" will be recyclable. The LFTR would not be a proliferation tool of choice, without proliferation resisting modifications, and such modifications are possible if desired. Large scale production of LFTRs will reduce nuclear costs. LFTRs potentially have much higher levels of thermal efficiency than light water reactors, and therefore will need less water if water cooled. If the availability of coolant water is an issue, LFTRs can be air cooled. Terrorist threats can be prevented by housing LFTRs in inaccessible underground chambers that cannot be attacked by aircraft.

In addition the LFTR will be environmentally friendly, and will have a small physical footprint as well as require far less material to build. The LFTR Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) will be easily several hundred times greater than that of a conventional Light Water Reactor. In addition to these benefits the LFTR would be an effective tool for fighting Anthropogenic Global Warming. The LFTR can fill a number of gaps in all current energy plans. For example its can serve as a reliable electrical generation backup, and fulfilling part time generation roles, without disastrous cost penalties. The LFTR can serve as a useful source of industrial heat. LFTRs can be used to power commercial ships at sea at a lower cost than conventional reactors can. LFTRs can provide low cost, stand alone electrical generation for isolated communities, and with their superior safety, can be safely housed in urban areas. If distributive generation and grid models are viewed as desirable, small LFTRs can be available to provide local electrical services. On the other hand, by clustering LFTRs, they will be capable of powering the entire grid.

There are several obstacles to LFTR acceptance. In 1972, Oak Ridge National Laboratory identified the development tasks, that would be required to build a LFTR prototype. The cost today of completing that plan might be as little as $2 to $3 billion dollars. Development of a commercial LFTR prototype might cost $5 to $10 billion dollars. Development of a highly efficient closed cycle CO2 orHelium turbine would probably cost a few more billion dollars. This sounds like a lot, but the development cost of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus 380 fell in a similar cost range.

The views of the Energy from Thorium community continue to evolve. Recent thinking has focused on the development of uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors (UMSR) as either a first step toward the LFTR, or as an alternative goal. The advantage of the UMSR would be that most of its technology has already been tested. Thus UMSR development costs would be far lower that for the LFTR, and its development will require far less time. The UMSR would compete with LWRs and potentially could cost considerably less. Some former LFTR advocates now are arguing that were the UMSR to emerge, LFTR design and production can be deferred for a considerable period of time.

Public knowledge and public acceptance are also obstacles to the emergence of the LFTR. In fact the Molten Salt Reactor technology was virtually unknown to the public as recently as 4 years ago. Members of the EfT community undertook a public education mission, using all forms of social media including blogs, comments on blogs and internet new outlets, public lectures, You Tube videos, an open science forum, an online document archive, Facebook pages, and Twitter pages. The LFTR message is beginning to reach technically sophisticated young people, as well as mature adults, and it is beginning to penetrate into the mainstream media. Thus the LFTR advocacy community can look with pride at its accomplishments. TheEnergy from Thorium Discussion Forum is considered a model for other Internet based Open Science Forums. And the EfT Document Archive is a valuable resource, for anyone who wants to study advanced forums of nuclear energy using internet resources.
Thus the use of Social Media by the EfT community has made its message far better known. The growth of the EFT core community to nearly 800 members from less than 40 a little more than 3 years ago, does not fully represent the spread of its message, Today hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of people have read about the LFTR in the main stream media, and have encountered the concept through social media. LFTR advocacy has taken on a life of its own outside the EfT community. Thus the EFT community, despite its small beginnings, has so far seen major success.

A third barrier to LFTR success, is public confusion about energy. A clear majority of the public believes that energy problem can in part or completely be solved by renewables and efficiency. Yet renewable costs are high, and solutions to problems related to the intermittency of renewable resources threaten to push the cost of renewable resources far beyond any realistic threshold. Economist have long raised questions about the effect of energy efficiency on energy consumption, and the assumption that energy demand can be lowered by increasing efficiency is at best still open for debate. In addition the assumptions about how rapidly efficiency can move forward seem very unrealistic. Despite these problems with the conventional wisdom on energy, the public, in large, seems to still accept it without questioning. Once the log jam created by the public's energy illusions is broken progress towards a rapid realization of LFTR potential can and should be made.

A fourth barrier to LFTR progress is the problems posed by the nuclear regulatory system. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poorly prepared to handle technologically advanced nuclear systems, and the NRC methods of operations are totally inconsistent with the transformation of the American energy system from fossil fuels to nuclear generated electricity. The NRC will require a revolutionary transformation if the full potential of the LFTR can be realized.

One final barrier would be capital and industrial organization The LFTR would be a very large risk for any investor. Its total development investment, required before any revenue would be coming in, would probably be somewhere between $10 and $15 billion. An even larger investment would be required to design and build the factories and the field deployment systems required to facilitate a massive global LFTR deployment. Investors willing to take these risks, and the skilled human resources required to create this new industry must be found.

Despite these and other barriers, LFTR advocates are confident that their very ambitious goals can be accomplished. They have yet to create a comprehensive plan, yet they have created many elements of such a plan. Given the size of the task they have undertaken, and their success to date, they cannot be said to be doing badly.

Atlanta Georgia Flood OF 2009 - CNN

In May 2010 the area Nashville, Tennessee experienced a 1000 year rain/flood event. Yet last September, the area of Atlanta, Georgia experienced a 10,000 year rain/flood event. What are the odds that those two events would happen within a year and within less than 300 miles of each other?

Planning for an Energy Future: The Zero Carbon Australia Plan as Representative Example

The creation of realistic plans for a viable energy future have, as of yet, received far to little attention. Energy goals should be tested with the creation of plans intended to demonstrate that the goals can be realized. Plans. in turn, should be subjected to rigorous criticism intended to test the plan's viability. This process should be open to public inspection, and participation. I have intended, on Nuclear Green to offer some limited criticisms of energy plans. Barry Brook's blog, Brave New Climate has offered a detailed criticism of one plan, Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan. The ZCA plan is a major attempt to demonstrate that the Australian society can be powered by renewable energy sources, by as soon as 2020. It is rational to criticize the ZCA plan on one of two grounds. The time frame of the plan might be overly ambitious, even if the plan itself was viable over a longer stretch of time. The viability of the plan would be a second grounds for criticism. Critics might argue that the plan

* Underestimated plan costs
* Underestimated resource requirements required to fulfill it.
* Over estimated the potential effect of efficiency on energy demand
* Underestimated the number and size if renewable facilities required to meet plan goals.
* Underestimated the size of energy storage facilities needed to maintain stable electricity production
* Underestimated carbon savings brought about by the plan

T'he first BNC discussion of the ZCA plan was sort of a free for all. Barry Brook noted the plan, and through open the discussion to anyone who read the plan - or part of it - and had a criticism to offer. The discussion drew 560 comments of varying quality, Early on in the discussion, I and Electrical Engineer Peter Lang, focused on Plan cost. I wrote:

Much of the solar power cost estimate is based on the SolarReserve’s 100 MW Tonopah project in Nevada. A little analysis brings out some interesting information. The project is designed to operate with Molten Salt Energy storage, and will reportedly produce 480,000 MWe a year, for a capacity factor of 55%. Zero Carbon estimates its cost at $700 million according to a 2009 news report, but they have since backed away from cost estimates. In addition the project will have to use some form of dry cooling, which is likely to increase costs, while lowering project efficiency by about 10%. So think in terms of a 50% capacity factor. On the basis of the estimated capacity factor, the cost of the gathering field could run as high as $12 per watt of rated output. Zero Carbon estimates 10.5 billion (Australian?) dollars per watt for the first GW project.
Given the speculative nature of the assumption that the cost of subsequent projects will drop, we cannot assume the sort of future price drops Zero Carbon assumed. EIA 2016 cost projections make ST power twice as expensive as nuclear power, and this is certainly plausible, given what we know about the Zero Carbon estimates.

Peter Lang then responded,

Charles,

Did you see Section 3.1, pp45-61? It does contain cost estimates. On page 61 they give a total for the CST (air cooled) at $190 billion. On page 60 they state an efficiency loss of just 1.3% for air cooling. This figure doesn’t look correct to me.
Table 3.7 (page 57) shows they are assuming a capacity factor of 72%.
I am ‘thinking out loud’ in the following comments.

I suspect the real problem with this exercise may be in their assumptions for the CST storage capacity and the transmissions capacity from each power station. Figure 4.1 and 4.2 show a summary of the output from the modelling. They have 17 hours of storage at each CST generator. They have analysed the demand and supply on half hour intervals, which is good. They have identified what they say is the worst case situation (page 84). I am left wondering if they have considered the storage, generation capacity and transmission capacity required from each individual site. For example, if half the CST power stations are under cloud at the same time for several days, as happens, the other CST power stations have to provide all the power. Is the storage, generation capacity and transmission capacity from each site sufficient to provide all the power when many of the other sites are not contributing? I suggest they need to analyse not only by half hour intervals of total output, but by half hour intervals at each individual generator.

For this reason, I do believe (at the moment) their figures for required CST generating capacity and transmission capacity.
A comment on total cost. They estimate $370 billion. (I suspect it is much higher). However, even if the $370 billion figures is correct, that is still over three times the cost of nuclear to do the same job.

I also questioned the ZCA's future cost projections,

Cost data for solat tower instalations are derived from a 2003 study,”Assessment of Parabolic Trough and Power Tower Solar Technology Cost and Performance Forecasts,” by Sargent & Lundy LLC Consulting Group.

Sargent & Lundy makes assumptions about economies of scale that are at best speculative. The assumption is that with increasing unit production, prices will go down. But this assumption was not born out in the wind generation Industry. Between 2003 and 2008, the cost of wind generation units went up between 2003 and 2008 despite increasing production.

Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan does not attempt to verify Sargent & Lundy cost projections between 2003 and 2009, despite the availability of data that could be used to do so.

The Energy Information Agency of the United States DoE annually publishes projected cost estimates for energy projects. The 2016 cost estimates for ST are would place its levelized cost at $0.2566 per kWh, excluding the cost of new transmission lines. This figure is far higher that the S&L 2003 estimate of $0.14 per kWh for solar tower output.

The study also made use of Sandia National Laboratory’s notoriously optimistic Sunlab estimates of solar costs. Again, no attempt was made to verify the accuracy of Sunlab estimates for 2003 to 2009. The Sunlab’s 2016 cost estimate for solar tower levelized power appears to be lower than the EIA estimate by something close to a factor of 10. Quite obviously both estimates cannot be right.

Thus the Zero Carbon Australia does not appear to offer credible cost estimates for the solar tower portions of its plan.

Peter Lang responded,

Charles Barton,

Excellent point. Another example that supports what you say is the NEEDS (2008) study. They used enormously optimistic “learning curves” for new capacity which resulted in them projecting that the cost per MWh would decrease by about 10% per year. Instead, as you point out, the costs actually rose. EPRI, an authoritative source of electricity industry cost information, has the LCOE of solar thermal rising from $175/MWh to $225/MWh between their 2008 and 2009 reports – a 30% increase in one year.

EPRI’s LCOE of $225/MWh for 2009 is close to the EIA LCOE of $0.2566 per kWh ($256/MWh) you mentioned.

[EPRI (2009), Table 8-2 and p10-20 gives cost as US$225/MWh (= A$250/MWh) for case with 6h energy storage (2008 constant $). It is worth noting that the cost has increased 30% in 1 year; the cost in the 2008 version of this same report was US$175/MWh.]

References:
EPRI (2009): EPRI (2009b). Program on technology innovation: integrated generation technology options; Technical Update, November 2009.
http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt?Product_id=000000000001019539

NEEDS (2008). Final report on technical data, costs, and life cycle inventories of solar thermal power plants.

What did the plan authors do to answer the numerous BNC criticisms of their plan?

ZCA co-author Patrick Hearps commented on the Climate Spectator,

“The review at BraveNewClimate is mainly a couple of renewable-energy-deniers who are able to handily exxagerate their renewable costs but put blind faith in their promise of cheap nuclear, the same promise we heard 50 years ago when nuclear was going to ‘too cheap to meter’.”

Heaps strategy in response to BNC criticism is to blow the 560 critical comments off as the work of "renewable-energy-deniers" without ever demonstrating that the deniers were making any errors. None of the ZCA plan's coauthors offered any comments in the discussion, and only a very limited defense was offered by plan advocates.

A second discussion of the ZCA plan followed a August 12 BNC post. Unlike the free for all, that followed the July 14th post, the authors of the August 12 post, Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang, offered a more systematic review of the ZCA plan. Nicholson-Lang observation included

They assume we will be using less than half the energy by 2020 than we do today without any damage to the economy. This flies in the face of 200 years of history.

They have seriously underestimated the cost and timescale required to implement the plan.

For $8 a week extra on your electricity bill, you will give up all domestic plane travel, all your bus trips and you must all take half your journeys by electrified trains.

They even suggest that all you two car families cut back to just one electric car.
You better stock up on candles because you can certainly expect more blackouts and brownouts.

Addressing these drawbacks could add over $50 a week to your power bill not the $8 promised by BZE. That’s over $2,600 per year for the average household.

Nicholson-Lang compared the ZCA 2020 energy se estimates with estimates made in the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) report on Australian energy projections to 2029-30. Despite the fact that the ABARE estimates assumed small but realistic increases in efficiency between now and 2020,

In the Plan, total energy demand was reduced by 63% below ABARE’s assessment.

The gap is justified by increased efficiency. Thus the plan's authors assume a huge increase in energy efficiency in only 10 years period of time. Such an assumption can be described as speculative and very unlikely, and are typical of every renewables based future energy plan I have looked at. Nicholson-Lang

increased electricity demand by 38% above the demand proposed in the Plan.

Which was itself a wildly optimistic assumption. The plans calculations of 2020 renewable energy costs could best be described a dodgy, and Nicholson-Lang suggested

that ABARE’s future cost reductions were more likely to apply than the reductions used in the Plan. Applying these costs to the increased installed capacity increased the total capital cost almost 5 fold and increases the wholesale cost of electricity by at least five times and probably 10 times. This will have a significant impact on consumer electricity prices.

Thus simply by checking ZCA2020 estimates against other, and very likely more reliable sources, the assumptions of the plan begin to fall apart, and a hugely more expensive energy future begins to emerge. Even when making very generous cost allowances to the ZCA plan including ignoring likely inflation, Nicholson-Lang estimated the wind portion of the ZCA plan would cost in excess of 180 billion Australian dollars, while the solar portion of the plan was estimated to cost 1.270 trillion australian dollars. There were numerous uncertainties that effected renewable costs by 2-20 and the authors confessed,

we have used a downside uncertainty of 50% and an upside uncertainty of 260% for solar plants and 200% for the other components.

Thus the true cost of the ZCA plan could work out to be as high as 3.77 trillion Australian Dollars.

e have reviewed the “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan” by Beyond Zero Emissions. We have evaluated and revised the assumptions and cost estimates. We conclude:
The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan has significantly underestimated the cost and timescale required to implement such a plan.

Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate.
The wholesale electricity costs would increase nearly 10 times above current costs to $500/MWh, not the $120/MWh claimed in the Plan.

The total electricity demand in 2020 is expected to be 44% higher than proposed: 449 TWh compared to the 325 TWh presented in the Plan.

The Plan has inadequate reserve capacity margin to ensure network reliability remains at current levels. The total installed capacity needs to be increased by 65% above the proposed capacity in the Plan to 160 GW compared to the 97 GW used in the Plan.

The Plan’s implementation timeline is unrealistic. We doubt any solar thermal plants, of the size and availability proposed in the plan, will be on line before 2020. We expect only demonstration plants will be built until there is confidence that they can be economically viable.

The Plan relies on many unsupported assumptions, which we believe are invalid; two of the most important are:
1. A quote in the Executive Summary “The Plan relies only on existing, proven, commercially available and costed technologies.”

2. Solar thermal power stations with the performance characteristics and availability of baseload power stations exist now or will in the near future.

The Nicholson-Lang study received well over 300 comments, most of which were supportive of its position. Again none of the plans authors or researchers availed themselves of the opportunity to refute their critics arguments.

A third BNC critique of ZCA. this one authored by Australian scholar Ted Trainer appeared on BNC nearly a month after the second critique. Trainer, again notes what has already been noted, that ZCA sets its energy generation goals far too low.

The spectacular conclusions ZCA arrives at are largely due to the energy supply target set, which is very low. Present Australian final or end-use energy consumption is 3900PJ/y, and ZCA says this can be reduced to 1660 and kept there. (Fig 4.1 represents the task as supplying an average of 1317 PJ…35 GW, and the wind and solar thermal plant requirements seem to correspond to this lower figure.??)

In recent years Australian energy consumption has been growing at over 2% p.a.;, although ABARE expects this to fall to 1.9% p.a. by 2030. ZCA notes electricity consumption is growing at 3.15% p.a., and transport energy use is growing at a similar rate. A 2% p.a. growth rate indicates that demand will double by 2045. In my view the appropriate target for a discussion of the Australian energy problem is the likely 2050 demand. In other words as I see it the discussion should begin by focusing on supplying around 8000 PJ/y in 2050 if business as usual continues, and then consider how conservation effort and new ways might reduce this.

Trainer is a neo-Malthusian, but this is beside the point. Trainer points to facts that strongly mitigate against the ZCA view, that australia could supply all of its energy needs through the use of renewables and resort to greater efficiency as soon as 2020. Trainer attacks the efficiency illusions of ZCA by pointing to one of its statements,

“Ongoing per capita efficiency gains of 1 – 1.3% p.a. after 2020 keep total demand steady at least to 2040, while allowing or population growth.” (p. 15.)

Trainer comments,

No support is given for this statement.

This is not the only occasion on which ZCA simply says things are going to work out without offering a reason why we should thnk that is the case, as Trainer points out

“[the plan]…intends to decouple energy use from GDP growth” . . .

Trainer notes the plan offers

no further comment. The implied assumptions are astronomical, i.e., apparently that the factors presently driving over 3% p.a growth in electricity and transport energy demand at will cease to operate from now on.

Thus the plan assumes a very large role for efficiency in fulfilling plan goals,

However, I have not been able to find more than a few scraps of useful data on what is likely to be achieved. (In CAN I assumed a 33% reduction.) The 2050 task for ZCA therefore seems to me to be dealing with a 6400 PJ/y BAU supply task.

ZCA discusses many valuable ideas whereby this BAU demand might be reduced, such as moving from petrol to electricity for cars. Their major strategy is to assume that the whole economy can be more or less totally shifted to electricity, and that this can come from wind and solar thermal systems. However while they discuss at length many functions that can be shifted to electricity, they do not show what proportion of present energy demand can be shifted. This requires good data on the forms and uses of energy in the Australian economy, which I have not been able to get, e.g., how much how goes into water heating, space heating, furnaces…

Trainer finds many other flaws in the ZCA plan.

i. The efficiency gain assumed for electric vehicles should be perhaps halved.

ii. The assumed proportion of travel that can be transferred to electric vehicles is too high, in view of how well people and freight can be got to intended destinations by light vehicles and public transport, and in view of what people will accept.

iii. The embodied energy costs of plant might be much more than 10 times as high as has been assumed.

iv. Far more storage for solar thermal needs to be assumed, perhaps 96 hours, as distinct from 17.

v. The amount of solar thermal capacity might need to be trebled I am right about the peak vs average issue.

vi. Very optimistic assumptions and estimates have been made throughout, including regarding costs.

Trainer's conclusion then is

Combining clear and confident estimates for all these factors would obviously yield a final multiple of ZCA plant requirements, costs and annual investments that would be many times greater than those ZCA arrives at. The application of the CAN approach to Australia’s situation indicates that even with our good renewable resources we could not afford to depend solely on them. (This . . . is an argument against the possibility of running an energy intensive society on renewables.)

In the comment that followed Trainers post, Neil Howes offered a partial answer to some of Trainer's points, yet Howes argument fell far short of a refutation of Trainer's analysis. It should also be noted that yet again, none of the ZCA writers showed up on BNC to defend their work from Trainer's critique. In this regard Matthew Wright and company resemble other renewable advocates including Amory Lovins, Mark Z. Jacobson, and Joe Romm, who have repeatedly failed to respond to criticism.

I have not attempted to offer a detailed review of the ZCA 2020 report, since one informal and two formal analyses have been already offered on BNC. Given the case that is made against ZCA in three separate posts/discussions of the report, and the failure of the ZCA writers to offer any defense of their conclusions, in response to their critics, the ZCA report must be regarded as completely discredited.

There are a number of ways to study future energy plans. One is to review a number of plans, identify common assumptions and features, and then offer a critique of the common features.

A second approach, the one taken by Brave New Climate, is to look at a single plan in depth. The very fact that numerous writers/critics have contributed to that process on Brave New Climate has contributed to the depth of the critique. The critical analysis of the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan should contribute to a better understanding of the requirements for creating a viable energy plan. ZCA critics have set a high threshold for all future energy plans, but in particular renewable energy plans. Flaws in the ZCA plan, including the underestimation of renewables costs, the under estimation of energy storage requirements to insure renewables' reliability, and the over estimates of probable energy savings from increased efficiency are common to all renewable based future energy plans I have reviewed to date. The ZCA review process in Brave New Climate has set a high threshold for future renewable energy plans, one which it is clearly doubtful will ever be meet.

Finally, it should be noted that renewables advocates have not attempted to establish open science platforms to critique their own findings as well as the views of others. In contrast, the supporters of nuclear power have two separate platforms on which open science is practiced. They are The Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum, and Brave New Climate. The lack of critical standards and the problem avoiding, problem denying approach of renewables backers almost certainly doom their effort to failure. BNC criticisms of the Zero Carbon Australia Energy plan suggests that it and similar renewable energy plans fail and will fail to offer realistic visions of the future.

Why the LFTR is Still Needed

A new MiT report, The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, argues that

Uranium supplies will not limit the expansion of nuclear power in the US or around the world for the foreseeable futurer . . .

This should quiet the anti-nuclear power camp on that particular issue, but it won/t. Critics of nuclear power have a tin ear when it comes to evidence. Any evidence that discredits their position simply does not exist, in their minds, and thus they will discount the MiT Report, and continue to tell us that we are running out of uranium.

If we are not running out of uranium is their any justification for the LFTR, a reactor that operates on an alternative - Thorium - fuel cycle? The answer is that there are several good reasons for adopting LFTR technology, even though there may be a large supply of accessible uranium.

One major reason for choosing the LFTR is that it invites far lower fuel cycle related capital investments. If the future reactor fleet is to be entirely uranium fueled, very large capital investments will have to go into uranium mines, processing facilities, enrichment facilities, and spent fuel management. in addition all of these facilities have significant operation costs attached.

Now consider fuel related the capital costs associated with a fluoride salt thorium reactor deployment compared to that of a massive deployment of uranium fueled molten salt reactors. First thorium is a bye product of rare earth mining, and with increasing rare earth use in the economy, more and more thorium will be coming out of the ground anyway. Thus, unlike uranium which is often mined in costly uranium only mines, thorium basically comes out of the earth at no added cost, from mines that would exist whether or not we wanted to recover thorium.

Secondly, while the milling expenses for thorium and uranium would probably be similar, 200 times more uranium would have to be milled, because uranium reactors operate on a once through fuel cycle reactors, which consumes less than 0.5% of the milled uranium, while nearly 100% of the milled thorium will be consumed in closed fuel cycle LFTR.

Secondly, the uranium must be enriched, and this involves another costly, energy intense process. With thorium the enrichment process can be skipped. Following enrichment uranium oxide must be prepared fabricated into reactor fuel pellets. in contrast thorium would be prepared for reactor use by fluoridation, a simple, inexpensive and well understood chemical process. At that point the thorium would be inserted into a reactor blanket where it would be bombarded with neutrons. After thorium absorbs a neutron it is transformed into protactinium 233, which will be separated from the blanket salts by fluoride chemical processes, that will be performed by processing equipment that is directly attached to the reactor. Then the p
rotactinium is stored for a few months, while it undergoes nuclear transformation to fissionable U-233. Once that occurs, the U-233 is automatically inserted into the reactor core by another reactor mechanism. All of these processes are low cost.

The advantage of the Thorium Fuel cycle LFTR is that it requires a fuel infrastructure that is 200 times smaller than a fleet of once through uranium cycle reactors would require. The added cost of the uranium infrastructure is not the primary problem. Rather it is the enormous task of building the infrastructure. The LFTR will require a large infra structure as well, but the infrastructure that will be required to keep LFTRs fueled will be tiny compared to that of a once through uranium fueled reactor fleet.

If we draw the comparison between LFTRs and LWRs, even more U-235 has to be prepared per GWh of power delivered. LWRs waste about 17% of the U-235 that goes into the core, as well as an even larger percentage of the plutonium created in the core. These inefficiencies mean that more U-235 has to be produced relative to the fuel requirements of LFTRs.

LFTRs produce little or no nuclear waste, and indeed can be significant consumers of actinides, which are the most troubling components of LWR nuclear waste. LFTR waste products reach benign levels of radioactivity after 300 years, but many useful and valuable fission products become safe after a few years, and can be mined from the fission product stream for use in industry. Long half life fission products have uses in medicine, and industry. Thus the fission products from LFTRs can be viewed as material resources rather than nuclear waste.

Although Fast Breeder Reactors share many of the advantages of the LFTR, they are likely to be considerably more expensive to build and deploy in large numbers. In addition, FBRs require 10 times the fissile inventory of LFTRs or even more, thus limiting the size of the initial deployment of FBRs. FBR advocates argue that the higher breeding ratio of the FBR will make up for the disadvantage. But it will take time to breed up to the size of an initial LFTR deployment. Supplementing the FBR start up stock with freshly separated U-235 would require the same sort of uranium mining, processing and seperating facilities that would be required by a uranium fueled reactor deployment. Using the nuclear fuel inventory in existing LWR waste stockpiles, more than enough LFTRs could be started to provide 100% of American electricity. If the LFTRs simply replaced the fuel they consumed through nuclear breeding, no further reactors would only be required except to meet added electrical demand.

The LFTR offers both lower cost and significant deployment advantages over the FBR.

Thus the LFTR offers economic and deployment advantages over any of its competitors including Light Water Reactors, Uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors, and fast breeder reactors. It would be far cheaper to invest in LFTR development and deployment than to build the new uranium mines, mills, isotope separation and fuel fabrications facilities that would be needed to support a uranium fueled reactor deployment. Clearly then even given adequate uranium supplies, the LFTR continues to offer significant advantages for a large scale nuclear deployment.

From The Yorkshire Evening Post:

Answer to our energy problems

Published Date: 23 September 2010

ONE million people (Leeds and Wakefield combined) require one gigawatt of electricity and supplying this for one year uses 3,200,000 tonnes of coal, which would fill Elland Road Stadium five times.

It emits 8,500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and produces 900,000 cubic metres of toxic (and radioactive) fly ash.

One tonne of thorium (a 17inch cube) would do the same job. It 'burns' safely, to supply electricity cheaper than any other form of generation and, it produces no greenhouse gases or dangerous wastes.

Voters of Leeds and Wakefield, raise your hands if you like the idea, even though you might be thinking it can't possibly be true.

Well, you've just voted for Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs).

This method of electricity generation can meet the energy needs of developed and developing worlds within a couple of decades and provide power (electrical and transport) to every one of the projected nine billion peak population.

The fuel, thorium, is so abundant it will be here long after homo sapiens has ceased to exist.

Functioning reactor designs worked 50 years ago in the USA, but it was politically buried and, although resurrected eight years ago by Kirk Sorensen (see his blogs and on YouTube), nothing much is happening.

I'm at an age where I want political action in the UK, before I fall off my perch and since there is no greater single issue facing humankind, I will strive to create a single issue party 'The LFTRs to Power the Planet Party'.

The only objective will be to get sufficient seats at the next election to force whichever party is in power into action, with all the growth and jobs creation that implies.

Incidentally, if anthropogenic global warming is happening, it will cure that also.

Do some research and if you see the light, join the party (particularly if you fancy an MP's salary). Email me at: lftrs@hotmail.co.uk

Colin Megson, Leeds 17

Fluoride High Temperature Reactor Workshop at ORNL: Day one

I attended the Fluoride High Temperature Workshop at ORNL, and no doubt will be headed back later this morning for the second day. The FHR concept is closely related to the ORNL MSR. but somewhat less related to the LFTR. Current concepts call for uranium cycle, as opposed to thorium fuel cycle reactors.

The biggest difference between FHRs and MSRs is that FHRa place their fuel in graphite structures of graphite pebbles, while in a MSR, the fuel is dissolved in the core salts. There are in the MSR some design features that are required to manage the fuel coolant salt combination. This is, in the grand scheme of things, no big deal. Believe it or not the borrowing features from gas cooled graphite reactors or pebble bed reactors is considered a shortcut. The justification is that the Fluoride Salt coolant salvages gas cooled. graphite and pebble bed technology, and leads to the the ability to design reactors that are very cos competitive with Light Water Reactors. in fact the cost of the FHRs will run to only 50% of that of LWRs, without adopting a full court press approach to cost lowering.

Thus FHR costs will be closely related to MSR/LFTR costs. My own estimate of factory produced LFTR costs place them at about 50% of LWR costs, before the adoption of the full court press approach to cost lowering. The full court press approach, adopts every possible cost lowering measure, including site development savings through recycling old coal fired power plant sites as LFTR venues.

The cost lowering potential of either the FHT or the LFTR should put both on the fast track as LWR replacements. We need one or both if we are to reach our 2050 goal of an 80% reduction of CO2 emissions from energy related economic activities. As I have argued elsewhere in Nuclear Green every plan that calls for replacement of fossil fuel energy generations would doom industrialized society to an unmitigated economic disaster.

The most significant impression I formed of the conference is of a business as usual approach that lacks urgency, and lacks an understand of or an appreciation for the task that they face. We - humanity - face a huge challenge over the next 40 years to not only replace the old energy basis of our society with a new energy basis. At the same time it would be unacceptable to stop economic and social processes, that is beginning to bring ever higher levels of energy to several billion people. if my assessment is correct, the only technology that currently holds the potential to do that is Molten Salt nuclear technology. Thus the task which the FHR Workshop addresses is one of transcendent importance, and the utmost and most immediate urgency

What the Workshop lacks is an Alvin Weinberg, a visionary who can motivate participants by showing them he importance of what thy are doing. We are not ready yet. No one dares to give hope wings, no one dares to envision challenges and possibilities. We are not there yet, and the best we can hope for is a movement forward toward a realization of responsibilities and possibilities.

Update: At least one workshop participant, Sherrell Greene appears to be on the right track.

Search for Sherrell Green appears to be on the right track Search for a map Translate

Source: Attribution goes here

About Bing Highlights

Bing Highlights

Version 1.0.0 (12)

Copyright © 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Support

Source: Attribution goes here

About Bing Highlights

Post-Chernobyl Radionuclide Distributions in an Austrian Cow.

Guernica (1937), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). At the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid Spain.

Cross posted at Daily Kos, along with an amusing poll, here. - NNadir

Two closely related radioactive nuclides found in agricultural products are Cesium-137 (Cs-137) and potassium-40 (K-40). The former does not occur naturally except in very tiny amounts in uranium ores from the spontaneous fission of uranium. Observed quantities of Cs-137 now found worldwide in almost all of the biosphere are all anthropogenic. Most of it resulted from the age of open air nuclear testing, beginning in the 1940's and lasting through the 1960's.

The nuclear accident at Chernobyl however, famously distributed a new pulse of this radionuclide in large areas of Europe, as far away as Scotland, and this pulse is still easily traceable and detectable today. It is incumbent upon me, as a nuclear power advocate, to discuss this point.

Potassium-40, by contrast, is naturally occuring and has been present in living things - albeit in ever decreasing amounts - since the dawn of life on this planet. It is an artifact of the fact that with the exception of hydrogen, almost all the mass of living things was created in the interiors of extinct, exploded stars.

Potassium and cesium are closely related in their chemical, and thus, biological behavior, since along with lithium, sodium, and rubidium - which is also naturally radioactive, like potassium - they are all in the same chemical group, group I of the periodic table.

Francium is also in this group, and it is the most radioactive of all naturally occuring elements; its only natural isotope has a half-life of just 22 minutes. Relatively rare natural decays of uranium-235, the less common isotope of natural uranium, forms small amounts of francium, which almost immediately decays. The equilibrium quantity of all the francium on earth is thought to be on the order of a few grams, in extremely low concentrations. Its existence is mostly a laboratory curiousity, of no practical consequence.

For more than a half of a century, scientists around the world - at first in connection with radioactive fallout from nuclear testing and then in the interest of tracer analysis things like the erosion of soils, and finally to understand the effects of Chernobyl - have been investigating the behavior of cesium-137.

I covered the topic of cesium-137 as a tracer in soils in this space in a diary called Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining, Even Mushroom Clouds: Cs-137 and Watching the Soil Die.

The nuclear properties of Cs-137 are as follows according to the Table of Nuclides maintained by the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute:

The half-life is 30.07 years. It decays to an unstable isomer of Barium, Ba-137m - which has a half-life of just 2.552 minutes, which in turn decays to give stable non-radioactive Ba-137.

The radioactive decay law thus indicates that 57.5% of the cesium-137 released by Chernobyl still exists, and 42.5% of it has already decayed.

The decay energy of cesium-137 is 1.175630 MeV (million electron-volts), mostly in the form of low penetrating beta particles, whereas the decay of Ba-137m, which is always present with Cs-137 in very small quantities, gives highly penetrating gamma rays with an energy of 0.662 MeV. The latter are more dangerous than the former, because of the nature of the energy, but the former are still dangerous internally in tissue because beta particles deposit their energy in the tissue within a few centimeters.

Cesium-137 is generally considered to be, because of its chemical and nuclear properties to be the most problematic of all fission products. I am actually fond of cesium-137, but I agree that in the environment it clearly is the most dangerous fission product.

We may now compare Cs-137 to K-40, the naturally occurring radioisotope of potassium.

The nuclear properties of K-40 are as follows: Its half-life is 1.277 billion years. It decays by two means: beta decay and by electron capture, with its "branching ratio" indicating that 89.28% of the time it decays by the former mechanism, decaying by the latter the rest of the time. The energy of the two decays are not equal. For beta decay, the energy is 1.311 MeV, and for electron capture, 1.505 MeV, all of it released as highly penetrating gamma and x rays.

You cannot be alive without being exposed to K-40's radioactivity. All of the potassium on earth - which is essential to life - contains potassiumm-40. In percentage terms, 0.0117% of earth's potassium is radioactive K-40.

The earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years old. Thus it is easy to calculate from the radioactive decay law what fraction of the earth's potassium-40 remains since the formation of the earth: About 92.1% of it has decayed and about 7.9% of it remains. Life on earth may have arisen about 3.7 billion years ago, it is believed. If this is true, life evolved - again by direct calculation - in an environment in which potassium was about 8 times as radioactive as it is now.

So much for the introduction for the paper from the primary scientific literature that I will discuss today, written by two Austrian scientists, Herbert Rabitsch, and Elke Pichl. The reference, with abstract, is Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 99 (2008) 1846–1852.

The title is Lifetime accumulation of 137Cs and 40K in the ribs and sternum of an Austrian "mountain pasture" cow.

Since we are discussing, um, radionuclides, it might be relevant to discuss how the cow, um, died. No it was not from cancer. The life and death of the cow are discussed in detail in the paper. Here's what it says:

The calf under investigation was born in a highly contaminated region of Styria, Austria, at the time of the fallout following the Chernobyl accident. During the fallout and the first week after the deposition, dam and calf were kept in the barn. In the first three months of life, the calf ingested highly contaminated milk from its suckling cow. After this time the animals were alternately fed over the course of seasons on contaminated mountain pastures and by contaminated hay in the barn. Therefore, the growing calf ingested the artificial radionuclide 137Cs (physical half-life: 30.1 y) by high contaminated forage, which was mainly due to the Chernobyl accident above all in the first years, and less contaminated forage in the following years until the end of its life. The time course of 137 Cs-intake was not pursued. There was also a fairly continuous ingestion of 40K (physical half-life: 1.28 X 10⁹ y). The continuous ingestion of potassium leads to an approximately stationary activity level in the adult body. Thus, the activity levels of 137Cs and 40K were caused by chronic ingestion of contaminated feed starting from suckling during the first months and thereafter by consuming common cows diet up to the day of slaughter. At the time of slaughtering in November 1992, the cow was 6.5 years old. During its lifetime the cow had born three calves.

There's no comment on the three calves, whether they had twenty five or more eyes of if they grew up to be as tall as the Empire State Building or as tiny as a boll weevil.

That's a shame.

What happened to the cow after death - don't be squeamish, especially if you eat cows (I don't) - is described in the experimental section:

...Samples of the ribs and sternum are originating from an adult cow which was slaughtered in November 1992. Materials under investigation were deep frozen after slaughtering and had to be thawed before sample preparation and measurement. Preparation procedures were made mainly by hand with a scalpel or chisel, but also a combined circular saw-blade machine and milling cutter was used. Most of the various components of a rib pair were prepared separately and then measured as paired left and corresponding right specimens. Some samples of low mass had to be pooled appropriate to their physiological function...

The exact date the poor cow, a mother of three, was, um, executed is given in another part of the experimental section:

All data for activities are related to November 14, 1992 (day of slaughter) and include corrections for self-attenuation of the photons within the different sample materials and also for moisture losses during freezing, thawing and sample preparation. Corrections due to moisture losses of sample materials came up to 15% and were shared according to the masses of those samples that were involved during the preparation. Activity concentrations are related to fresh weight and all results for activity concentrations and activities are listed in the tables with one combined standard uncertainty. These uncertainties include all identified standard uncertainties from random and systematic effects. Statistical uncertainties of 40 K-activities are greater than the corresponding values of 137Cs because of the 40K-background effect. Measured values of activities and their calculated concentrations were rounded up or down according to scientific rules. Nevertheless, values for activity ratios of 137Cs and 40K are presented with two decimals.

The paper is not about risk from eating cows contaminated by Cs-137 from cows. The chief point that the paper makes is that internal bone contamination by the isotope is not homogenous. It is, instead, unevenly distributed between various bones.

So how "hot" are the bones of the executed cow?

The unit of radiactivity is the Bequerel, which is one decay per second. A nuclide with a short half-life, like cesium-137, will have a lot more decays per second, than a nucleus with a long half-life like potassium-40. Thus something with a short half-life is way [i]more[/i] radioactive, mole for mole - a mole being 6.023 X 10²³ atoms - than something with a long half-life.

So again, how hot are the bones of the executed, dismembered cow?

Here are some figures from table 4 in the paper:


Cortical bone Cs-137: 35.9 Beq/kg K-40: 25 Beq/kg
Trabecular bone Cs-137: 53 Beq/kg K-40: 31 Beq/kg
Cartilage matrix Cs-137: 105.8 Beq/kg K-40: 55.5 Beq/kg
Adherent tissues
Articular cartilage Cs-137: Beq/kg 259 K-40: 133 Beq/kg
Periosteum Cs-137: 127.10 Beq/kg K-40: 47.6 Beq/kg
Costal pleura and periosteum, Cs-137: 95 Beq/kg K-40: 48 Beq/kg
Pure intercostal muscle tissue: Cs-137: 219 Beq/kg K-40: 80 Beq/kg
Fat: Cs-137: 40 K-40: 29

Sternum
Cortical bone Cs-137: 26.8 Beq/kg K-40: 28.0 Beq/kg
Trabecular bone Cs-137: 45.9 Beq/kg K-40: 27.7 Beq/kg
Synchondroses
and articular cartilageCs-137: 167 Beq/kg, K-40: 98 Beq/kg

I have omitted, for editorial convenience, the uncertainties in these measurements.

Depending on the tissue, the "contaminated cow" had quantities, measured in decays per kg, of cesium-137 that were 1 to 5 times that of natural potassium-40.

Risk coefficients for cesium-137 are given here. The units of risk are in pCi. A picocurie is 1 trillionth of 3.7 X 10¹⁰ Beq, or roughly 0.037 decays every second or put in the inverse, 1 Beq has 27 pCi.

We would expect in a human population that about 20% of the people who are alive today will die of a fatal cancer. Put another way, if you have 100,000 people in a stadium, about 20,000 will statistically die from cancer. This of course, is a lifetime risk. Included in these cancers are heritary factors, and environmental factors, including air pollution, heavy metal contamination, etc, occupational factors, such as being an airline flight attendant, as well as radiological factors that occur naturally, including the necessity of having some K-40 in your flesh, without which you would immediately die. There are many other types of cancer etiology, of course.

If all of the above is true, we can define the number of extra cancers, beyond 20,000 that would result from eating one kilogram of the most contaminated tissue of the contaminated cow, specifically the intercostal muscle tissue.

The risk is 8.1 X 10^-12 cancers per pCi, and we have 27pCi/Beq X 218 Beq X 8.1 X 10^-12 cancers per pCi = 0.004 extra cancers per 100,000 people, from the seriously contaminated cow. It follows that if you ate 210 kg of the most seriously contaminated tissue in the 6 year old Austrian cow raised on contaminated grass, you would increase your cancer risk by 1 in 100,000.

We may note, that there are people who eat hundreds of kilos of meat per year. I haven't had a kilo of meat in decades, but I do understand that many people do eat meat.

If one eats 210 kg of the most seriously contaminated cow meat for 20 years, ignoring nuclear decay and the decreasing absorption of cesium-137 into grass owing to adsorption into, say illitic clay soils, the risk would be about 20 extra cancers in 200,000.

This is non-trivial. Let me go further: As someone who lost two parents to cancer, I can tell you that one cancer death is non-trivial, but, that said, this is really the wrong question.

I oppose the car culture. I want it, and the dangerous fossil fuels that support it, phased out. Thus if I wish to be disingenuous, I could point to the Yugo and announce that its properties demonstrate that cars are unsafe. Of course, I would be being dishonest. A Yugo is a very different car than a Mercedes Benz or even a Ford Escort.

Chernobyl was never a typical type of nuclear reactor. It was a very, very, very, very poor design, and it was operated in a completely reckless way when it failed.

Chernobyl was the worst case, a reactor that was at the end of a full fuel cycle, and thus had the maximum radioactivity that a reactor can have, and which then, because it had a flammable core, was able to burn for weeks distributing fuel particles all over Europe.

It is relevant to ask if Austria - which is an anti-nuclear state and has refused to operate the Zwentendorf reactor it built, thus starting a Czech humorous campaign to "Start Zentendorf" - has seen a huge blip in cancers post-Chernobyl.

I frankly don't know.

Since 1986, life expectancy in Austria has risen from from 74 years in 1986 to 80 years in 2008. Of course this is not because of Chernobyl and may, in fact, be in spite of it.

Whatever.

The authors of the paper did prove one thing that surprised them. From executing the cow and dismembering the cow they did show that the distribution of the radioactive isotopes Cs-137 and related K-40 is not uniform.

In any case, the question I really want to raise is whether the worst case ever observed with nuclear energy, Chernobyl, is better than the best case with nuclear energy's only alternative, dangerous fossil fuels.

My contention is that nuclear energy need not be perfect to better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else, which, happily it is.

I say that all the time.

More Comments to Douglas Wise on BNC

I had another exchange of comments with Douglass Wise on Brave New Climate over the weekend.

Douglas, your assessment “that many more years of very expensive research would be needed before the IFR concept could be shown to be a goer and live up to the potential claimed for it by its advocates” is probably correct. The Indians have launched a second generation FBR program,. That program would appear to develop at least some IFR features (ie. metallic fuel) through a multiple prototype stage that will last at least 15 years. Argonne IFR research has focused on the IFR as a burner not a breeder. The highest breeding ratio for an IFR design i have found coming out of Argonne is 1 to 1.07, which is comparable to the ORNL MSBR. Argonne can probably develop a high breeding ratio design, but that will take considerable time, and probably the most economic approach would be to throw in with the Indians.

There is research from both Oak Ridge and Russia, which suggests that the MSRs can be competitive with IFRs as actinide burners. Part of the LFTR sales pitch will be that you can dump nuclear waste into a bunch of LFTRs and get a heck of a lot of electricity in return.

As for development time, I would be willing to bet you a sushi dinner that were LFTR and IFR R&D given equal financing, the LFTR would come to market first,

Douglas, Of the issues that turned me into a Molten Salt Reactor/LFTR advocate in 2007 were nuclear costs, and scalability, although by the time I completed my initial analysis, I was convinced that the MSR solution would offer superior safety, and a solution to the problem of nuclear waste. Later analysis was to reveal that the MSR offered solutions to the problems of industrial heat, intermediate and peak power, while offering in costal areas desalinization. i found multiple paths to nuclear cost saving, for example recycling old coal fired power plants as LFTR sites.

From my perspective, you have focused on the right questions. Until recently i was in agreement with Barry that the short term energy solution solution, but after attending David Le Blanc’s presentation at ORNL in May, and discussing the uranium fueled MSR option with Kirk Sorensen, i now think that non-breeder uranium fueled MSRs can be developed quickly, and that they would be a low cost alternative to LWRs.

Douglas, since my father played a significant role in the development of the light water reactor, and indeed regarded this as the professional accomplishment that gave him the most pride. What lead me to the molten Salt reactor was first a question about big a LWR build out could be. It is 3 years later and no one has come up with a doable large scale LWR buildout that would offer even a significant part of the 2050 solution.

I thus decided that that alternatives were needed. I looked at 2. Robert Hargraves was advocating the Pebble Bed Reactor in 2007, and I seriously considered it, before I decided that the LFTR was a far better candidate for a rapid buildout than the PBMR.
I knew about MSR technology because i was still living in Oak Ridge during the MSRE, and we read about it in the news paper.. i really talked to my father more about MSRs in 2007-2008, than i had during the 1950′s and 60′s. What drew me to the MSR was its simple design, compact size, high operating temperature, safety, and potential for solving the nuclear waste problem.

Actually i began to appreciate my father’s contribution to MSR development after i got better acquainted with its design features and the history of its development.

There are undoubtedly some brand loyalty issues, but since my father contributed to the the development of several reactors, i have some choice regarding which brand to be most loyal too. Brand loyalty would seem to preclude criticizing the LWR, but that has not stopped me.

In addition DMSR type reactors could serve as a bridge to the LFTR.

Energy: Renewables and Efficiency won't work, but the Molten Salt Reactor can.

In order to be reasonable assured that replacement energy resources of the current fossil fuel based energy economy, serious attempts should be made to identify plausible options. Most 2050 replacement energy plans, both for the United States and globally, do not offer anywhere near a one for one replacement for current energy sources. Indeed, much of the energy in future energy plans comes from a source that can be labeled, unwarranted assumptions.

Take for example the Zero Carbon Australia, 2020 report which claimed that all of Australian energy could com from renewable energy sources by 2020. Ted (F.E.) Trainer, a well known Australian energy theorist pointed to some of the plans flaws,

To summarise, my back of the envelope impression is that when the foregoing points are added the ZCA conclusion is out by the following factors:
i. The efficiency gain assumed for electric vehicles should be perhaps halved.
ii. The assumed proportion of travel that can be transferred to electric vehicles is too high, in view of how well people and freight can be got to intended destinations by light vehicles and public transport, and in view of what people will accept.
iii. The embodied energy costs of plant might be much more than 10 times as high as has been assumed.
iv. Far more storage for solar thermal needs to be assumed, perhaps 96 hours, as distinct from 17.
v. The amount of solar thermal capacity might need to be trebled I am right about the peak vs average issue.
vi. Very optimistic assumptions and estimates have been made throughout, including regarding costs.

Trainer was not the only critic of the ZCA plan to point out its unrealistic optimism. DaveBurraston has offered fact based critiques of the ZCA plans assumptions about wind implementation time, and solar facility construction times Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang, offered a long and detailed critique of the ZCA plan. They note,

BZE make a number of assumptions in assessing the electricity demand used to calculate the generating capacity needed by 2020. In summary these are:
1. 2008 is used as the benchmark year for the analysis. BZE defend this by saying “ZCA2020 intends to decouple energy use from GDP growth. Energy use per capitais used as a reference, taking into account medium-range population growth.”.
2. Various industrial energy demands in 2020 are reduced including gas used in the export of LNG, energy used in coal mining, parasitic electricity losses, off-grid electricity and coal for smelting.
3. Nearly all transport is electrified and a substantial proportion of the travel kmsare moved from road to electrified rail including 50% of urban passenger and truckkms and all bus kms. All domestic air and shipping is also moved to electric rail.
4. All fossil fuels energy, both domestic and industrial, is replaced with electricity.
Demand is reduced through energy efficiency and the use of onsite solar energy.

Thus

the net effect of these assumptions is to reduce the 2020 total energy by 58% below the 2008 benchmark and 63% below the ABARE estimate for 2020.

The plan thus assumes that over 50% of energy demand will simply disappear by 2020 because of efficiency improvements. Even given wildly optimistic assumptions about the growth of energy efficiency and its permanence, it is unrealistic to imagine that efficiency growth would lead to a 50% decline in Australian energy demand by 2020. But beyond ZCA's highly improbable assumptions about the gross increase in efficiency, is the highly questionable assumption that all efficiency gains will endure without rollbacks. In this respect ZCA resemble other pro-renewable ideology driven future energy plans. Yet a well established principle of classic economic theory suggest that efficiency is far from being a royal road to energy savings . The principle, called Jevons Paradox asserts that increased energy efficiency leads to increased energy use. Numerous scholars including Blake Alcott have questioned assumptions about energy efficiency made by Amory Lovins, and numerous renewables advocates. Alcott writes,

One certain conclusion, though, is that if Jevons is right, then efficiency policies are simply counter-productive. Even taxes on fuel or CO2 will be compensated by efficiency increases, and moreover they face the problem that tax revenue also gets spent on material and energy (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, p. 20).

And finds a further paradox,

By enabling population and affluence to rise, both business-as-usual and policy-induced efficiency gains are partial causes of environmental stress.

Thus at the very least, the assumption that efficiency gains will bridge the gap between current fossil fuel powered energy sources and the limited capacity of renewable energy sources to meet future societal demand for energy, we must acknowledge that the argument for a Malthusian collapse of civilization in a future energy crisis, has a real basis. Yet conventional renewable energy plans such as the ZCA2020 plan suffer from a serious flaw. They assume that nuclear power cannot and will not play an important role in the transition to a post carbon energy order. Were this assumption were to prove true, it can be argued that little will prevent the Malthusian collapse of civilization, but there are strong reasons for rejecting the assumption of a none nuclear future.

Critics of nuclear power assert that nuclear power is too expensive to serve as a practical source of post-carbon energy. The best thought out presentation of this argument is presented by Mark Cooper. But Cooper's research is seriously flawed, by a perspective that is limited to France and the United States, and by a perspective that assumes only the highest possible costs, rather than a range of future cost possibilities.. In fact new nuclear costs in Asia are quite low. For example the EIA reports that current levelized nuclear power costs in South Korea run from $0.029 to $0.048 per kWh. the high rang assumes a higher than current interest range. The levelized cost for nuclear power in China runs from $0.03 to $0.055 per kWh. These prices are very competitive with coal and extremely competitive with renewable costs in China and South Korea. The same source reports the levelized power costs of nuclear power in the United States to be $0.048 to $0.077, a cost which is very competitive with renewables. The levelized nuclear cost range for France is similar. These cost ranges fall within the current range of electrical prices charged in the United States, and are well below the current electrical price range in France.

But beyond the exaggerated cost claims about nuclear power, critics of nuclear power frequently ignore opportunities to decrease nuclear costs. In fact numerous steps can be taken to lower nuclear costs. These include factory manufacture of reactors, recycling the site and equipment from old coal fired power plants. It is far easier to transport small reactors than large reactors from factories, and small reactors can be set up far more quickly. Rapid manufacture lowers interest cost. Thus the movement to small, factory manufactured reactors holds potential for lowering nuclear cost.

In addition a switch to a more advanced nuclear technology, the molten salt reactor, has a significant potential for further lowering nuclear cost. MSRs are both simple and compact, thus potentially lowering materials input costs, as well as manufacturing cost. MSRs also produce far higher temperatures, opening the door to providing industrial heat, and combined heat and power uses. Waste heat from MSRs could be used in nuclear desalinization systems, opening the does for further income streams. Thus rather than offering one use for its heat, a MSR could operate an industrial heat topping cycle, an electrical middle cycle, and a desalinization bottom cycle, easily pushing total thermal efficiency to well above .50. These multiple uses would significantly lower the levelized cost for electrical generation.

Because of their high thermal efficiency MSRs can be manufactured in small sizes without sacrificing their efficiency when compared to large conventional reactors. Thus the MSR is an excellent candidate for factory manufacture. Molten Salt Reactors can also be air cooled, a feature that adds to their flexibility.

Because of their simplicity, safety, potential ease of manufacturing rapid set up, and because they have a virtually unlimited fuel supply, Molten Salt Reactors like the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor offer a significant route to a post carbon energy deployment. LFTRs in particular offer solutions to the nuclear waste problem, can produce their own fuel in a way that will prevent nuclear proliferation, and have the potential to produce electricity at a cost that is lower than conventional nuclear power plants, or renewable electrical sources. Thus MSR technology as to potential to be the energy silver bullet.

Ansewers to Douglas Wise's Questions about MSR/LFTR Technology

In what started out as a discussion of a BNC post on fast reactors, many questions about MSR/LFTR technology were raised. Since i was participating in the discussion, i attempted to answer many of the questions. here are some questions, by Douglas Wise and my responses.

Douglas Wise asked me to

clear a few misunderstandings I may have that relate to IFRs and LFTRs.

on BNC a couple of Days ago. Douglass observed:

I understand that the term LFTR relates to a bewildering array of different designs, having in common molten salt cooling and fuelling and the use of thorium – either mixed or separated from uranium and with continuous reprocessing onsite. If I am correct, do you not think that the multiplicity of designs reduces or enhances the chance of any single one ever getting built?

i responded,

you are correct that there is a whole class of Molten Salt Reactors, which can include both chloride and fluoride salt cooled reactors, single fluid and two fluid reactors. Fluoride reactors can be moderated by graphite, heavy water, by fluoride salts themselves, or even be relatively unmoderated fast neutron reactors. Chloride reactors are fast reactors.
There has been limited research on Chloride Salt fast reactors, despite some notable advantages over metallic sodium. They share on major disadvantage with IFR, the size of the load of fissionable materials required to maintain criticality.

The Two Fluid Le Blanc tube core is the simplest reactor core that will ever be designed.

Douglass also asked,

I also understand that most of the the initial research was conducted at Oak Ridge in the States and was subsequently carried on in Japan with joint funding from the States, Russia and Japan. This project appears to have run out of funding. Given the promise of the technology, as eloquently set out by its supporters, how do you explain that this funding has been allowed to lapse?

I responded,

During the Nixon administration a report was prepared by the AEC to justify the decision to kill the MSBR. Reasons included the argument that the the LWR and the LMFBR were mature technologies, while the MSBR was not. Three Mile Island was to prove the report wrong on the LWR, and the LMFBR was from from mature. in fact far more money was spent on the failed Clinch River Breeder Reactor that would have been required to develop MSBR. The report also argued rather absurdly that the MSBR should not be developed because it needed to be developed. The US Department of Energy has never taken another independent look at Molten Salt Reactor technology, and, as of last year, continues to reference the very flawed WASH-1222 for its MSR evaluation.

The MSR was considered dead until 4 years ago when Kirk Sorensen, David Le Blanc, David Walters, myself, and a few other people who understood the potential of MSRs and thorium started to work to educate people about it. I knew about the MSR because my father was a pioneer development, and did research on it at ORNL for 20 years.

Douglas Wise asked.

You move on in your final paragraph to suggest that “the EFT crowd is likely to produce a two fluid thermal fluoride salts thorium breeder, which does limit choices.” Does this indicate that you have misgivings about their likely final design concept?

My response was,

No, i favor a 2 fluid design.

Douglas asked,

I am also puzzled about your use of the term, “produce”. Does this imply that “the EFT crowd” is in possession of adequate funding to research and develop its preferred design?

My response,

This means that one or more funding sources may be in the offing.

Douglas stated,

If you really believe that an LFTR design can be taken to demonstrator level within a decade given sufficient funding, it may be more sensible for some nations to go directly for this technology and bypass Generation 3.

I responded,

There is a real potential for a uranium fueled, transition MSR, that might well compete with Generation III technology before 2020, with a LFTR emerging after 2020. This depends on investment interest. There may be possible military involvement in a near term MSR project.

Douglas wrote,

I have read that thermal LFTRs may breed less quickly than fast reactors, but this may not be important in the short to medium term, particularly as they require lower start charges.

I responded, High IFR breeding rates are not well documented, there are potential safety issues, enough current American weapons grade fissionable material stockpiles and RGP stockpiles are sufficient to start enough LFTRs to produce nearly 100% of American electricity with LFTRs + starting a number of IFRs.

Douglas asked,

what proportion of its potential economic advantage would be lost if one were to opt for water cooling and steam turbines as opposed to air cooling, gas turbines and a Brayton cycle (using either helium or CO2)?

I responded,

Efficiency with steam turbines up to .40, efficiency with toping and bottoming cycles + Brayton cycle >.50.

Douglas asked,

You talk of a uranium fueled transition MSR as a distinct entity, separate from the LFTR. Is this the chloride fast reactor that you referred to earlier or something else again?

I responded,

Something else, a uranium fuel cycle thermal converter that uses fluoride salt coolant/fuel carriers. The advantage would be that all of the technology for such a reactor was tested during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. The cost of a uranium fuel cycle reactor would be low, it would have all of the cost advantages of the LFTR, but without the added expense and complexity of breeding. While not offering sustainable technology, it would be very cost competitive with Light Water Reactors, as well as offering outstanding flexibility, rapid deployment, and outstanding safety.

Doug;as asked,

Am I to understand that plutonium wouldn’t be suitable as a start charge and that this transition reactor wouldn’t produce U233 from thorium?

I responded,

RGP could be used as a start charge, as could U-235 or a combination. The uranium cycle reactor would not be designed to produce U-233 via a thorium fuel cycle.

Douglas stated,

I am also wondering why this transition technology would be more likely to satisfy regulators more quickly than would an LFTR.

i responded, Fewer issues for regulators to consider. And proliferation issues not as complex.

Douglas enquired,

Perhaps ,on reflection, the transition reactor to which you refer is that that has recently been discussed here (molten salt cooled pebble bed as being researched by Prof Peterson?)

I responded,

We are talking about a standard MSR design that would be very similar to the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, but larger.

Finally Douglas stated,

I am particularly interested in the use of plutonium as a start charge. We have a 100 tonne stockpile of the stuff which has the potential, I would have thought, to be very valuable, despite the fact that several of our nuclear “experts” would like to render it permanently unusable.

I commented,

That 100 tons of RGP could start somewhere between 100 GWs and 200 GWs of MSRs/LFTRs. Not using it to produce energy would be a tragedy.