Barack Obama Still Deserves an F on Energy

In March of 2009 I wrote a post in which I argued Barack Obama deserved an F for his energy policy. This continues to be the case with the Obama administration continuing to make poorly thought out energy related decisions. Virtually every Obana administration energy related decision over the last 18 months, has been poorly thought out and has wasted opportunities.

Obama has used the stimulus package to offer further subsidies to the renewable energy industry, even though renewable energy is unreliable and is not cost effective when compared to nuclear energy.

Obama has avoided a heads up comparison of renewables and and nuclear energy by failing to appoint a commission on the national energy future.

The Obama administration has mismanaged nuclear loan guarantees.

The Obama administration probably acted improperly in its decision to shut down the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste project. I am no big fan of Yucca Mountain, but the Yucca shut down decision was political and not a response to the national energy need. Thus while the national energy situation is existential, the Obama administration continues to engage in political games over energy

What should Obama have done?

I suggested that the next President set up a Blue Ribbon fact finding commission,

to go about determining energy goals and steps required to accomplish preferred goals. . . .

Above all else the blue ribbon fact finders must not simply identify a vision but must begin the contagion process without which the vision will not be realized. They must also provide political leadership with political cover. There will be no doubt political opposition to the vision and the steps that will be taken to realize it. The first line of defense will be, "this is what the experts recommend". Because they are on the front line and ultimately exemplars, members of the blue ribbon commission must be selected for their courage, as well as their intelligence, capacity for rational thought, and vision. They will be exemplars for a nation and for the world, because it is anticipated that they will set a path on which all people will be traveling for the next 40 years.

It would be very nice to find a group of Richard Feynmans to set on the blue ribbon commission, people who are gifted visionaries, who have great respect for facts, and who have to the ability to ferret out the critical facts.

The Obama administration did eventually set up a Blue Ribbon Commission, but one that was mandated to bring recommendations regarding the nuclear future, and primarily offer alternative measures to fulfill the United States Governments legal obligation to manage nuclear waste. Although some of the Commission members were very competent, the Commission's members collectively fell far short of the Richard Feynman level. I made clear the role of the fact finders would face grave responsibilities, including providing political cover for political leaders who would be faced with difficult and possibly unpopular decisions.

The decisions related to electricity generation will be perhaps the most important, because potentially up to 80% of the energy in a post carbon society will be transmitted through electrical lines. Decisions cannot be left to the market. The market, while providing efficient mechanisms to determine price, and product choice, is poorly equipped to make strategic choices for the future. Decision makers have to basically anticipate future markets. That involves informed guesses, something the market regards as speculation. Markets like to gamble only if there is a great deal of money potentially to be made on bets. There is far too much at risk, and too much uncertainty about the energy future at the moment for most investors to feel comfortable about the risks involved in future energy investments. In the case of solar and wind generated electricity, this has led to the demand for government subsidies, both for the construction of generating facilities, and in tax linked support of revenue produced from energy generation.

The stake in the decision making process is such that wrong decisions could easily lead to the misspending of tens, or hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps even trillions of dollars of tax payer, rate payer, and investor money, without the production of a satisfactory electrical system. Impossible you say. Well just pay careful attention to where the decision making process is today. Mark my word, if the decision making process is not improved, it will lead to very unsatisfactory outcome.

We cannot hope to reach a proper decision without a Judicious determination of facts, and there are at present a lot of of enemies of facts in the environment. Enemies of facts include people who are selling flawed ideas and flawed products. Fact finding needs to be turned over to people who are skilled in determining facts, and this would certainly include nobel prize winning scientists. Others who are somehow representative of the general public need to included among the fact finders, and the fact finding process needs to be open to the public. The fact finders need a first rate staff, and the ability to commission research.

The fact finders need to be aided by skilled politicians who have ascended to the rank of statesmen. My father observed one such politician while attending a hearing of Project Independence in 1974. "I was most impressed," my father wrote. "He is young, intelligent, and highly articulate." Such a figure, if he were still around 34 years later, might well prove a valuable asset to the fact finders, perhaps as chairman of a fact finding commission. And if the politician, by now an elder statesman, were to hold high political office, so much the better. The name of the young politician who so impressed my father was Joseph Biden.

Any group of fact finders would need to carefully separate fact from hype before reaching its decision. As I have demonstrated on Nuclear Green there is a lot of hype in our current discussion of energy options. In fact the hype to information ratio in any discussion of renewable electrical sources is astonishingly high.

Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission fell far short in its composition and mandate. I wrote,

Blogger "uvdiv" has a negative assessment of many of the panel members, and many panel members are far less distinguished and gifted than could have been hoped. I had hoped for a energy panel chaired by Joe Biden, with members of the charisma and ability of Richard Feynman. In addition the panel reports to Secretary Chu, and not to the President. All of this suggests that the Mr. Obama does not yet know what he is doing.

The latest episode in the sorry story of the Obama Administration's mishandling the Nations Energy future, involves the mishandling of loan federal guarantees for a Nuclear Power Plant project in Maryland. Not only did the Obama administration fail to offer the Calvert Cliffs 3 project a subsidy, but loan guarantee conditions would have made the cost of the loan at least as high as a no guarantee loan would have been. In contrast, the Obama Administration DoE is offering the renewawable power industry sweetheart loan guarantee deals.

As I wrote 18 months ago, when I first suggested that the Obama Administration should get an F for its energy policy failures:

Barack Obama was elected to put an end to the non-deliberative policy approach of the Bush administration. So far, however, the Obama administration's attitude toward energy has been anything but fact based. Let us recall Ron Suskind's account of the Bush staffer:

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

The Obama administration has not yet engaged in a judicious determination of the facts about energy. Confident in their own power and in their ability to set policy on whim, they have decided to follow what will surely be a disastrous policy if followed long term. We can only hope that during the next few years, as America's war to assure itself an energy future becomes obviously more difficult, and Mr. Obama's ability to see his own mistakes, admit them and correct them will come and prevent a disaster. If not we are headed out into the wilderness without food or water. Leading people toward disaster surely is not progressive.

Reading the Obama Administration Tea Leaves

The Obama Administration might be accused of sending mixed signals on its attitude toward the future of nuclear power. First we have first the January 28, 2010 Obama Memo to Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY

SUBJECT: Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future

Expanding our Nation’s capacity to generate clean nuclear energy is crucial to our ability to combat climate change, enhance energy security, and increase economic prosperity. My Administration is undertaking substantial steps to expand the safe, secure, and responsible use of nuclear energy. These efforts are critical to accomplishing many of my Administration’s most significant goals.

An important part of a sound, comprehensive, and long-term domestic nuclear energy strategy is a well-considered policy for managing used nuclear fuel and other aspects of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Yet the Nation’s approach, developed more than 20 years ago, to managing materials derived from nuclear activities, including nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, has not proven effective. Fortunately, over the past two decades scientists and engineers in our country and abroad have learned a great deal about effective strategies for managing nuclear material. My Administration is committed to using this advanced knowledge to meet the Government’s obligation to dispose of our Nation’s used nuclear material.

Accordingly, I request that you establish a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (Commission) and appoint its members. Those members should include recognized representatives and experts from a range of disciplines and with a range of perspectives, and may include participation of appropriate Federal officials. The Commission’s business should be conducted in an open and transparent manner.

The Commission should conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including all alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. This review should include an evaluation of advanced fuel cycle technologies that would optimize energy recovery, resource utilization, and the minimization of materials derived from nuclear activities in a manner consistent with U.S. nonproliferation goals.

In performing its functions, the Commission should consider a broad range of technological and policy alternatives, and should analyze the scientific, environmental, budgetary, economic, financial, and management issues, among others, surrounding each alternative it considers. Where appropriate, the Commission may also identify potential statutory changes.

The Commission should provide an interim report to you within 18 months of the date of this memorandum, and that report should be made available for public comment. The Commission should provide a final report to you within 24 months of the date of this memorandum. The Department of Energy shall provide funding and administrative support for the Commission, as you determine appropriate, so that it can complete its functions within these time periods. Additionally, all executive departments and agencies shall provide such information and assistance to the Commission as you or the Commission may request for purposes of carrying out the Commission’s functions, to the extent permitted by law. Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to require the disclosure of classified, proprietary, law enforcement sensitive, or other information protected under governing law. This memorandum shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

You are hereby authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

The list of actual Blue Ribbon Commission appointees appears to be more calculated for political effect than for knowledge and wisdom. Although the Commission is charged with analyze the scientific, budgetary, economic, (and) financial issues involved in solutions to the used nuclear material problem. We have no economists on board, although Geologists Allison Macfarlane, believes herself to be an expert on nuclear costs. Macfarlane, however, appears to view the thorium fuel cycle in a considerably more positive light than she views the U-238 - reactor grade plutonium fuel cycle. Susan Eisenhower serves on the corporate advisory boards of Lightbridge (formerly Thorium Power), that might give her a significant knowledge of the thorium fuel cycle. The weight of the Blue Ribbon Commission lies heavily on the political/bureaucratic/expert of reference axis. The presence of two former congressmen on the commission suggests the Obama administration's desire to manage and even spin its eventual report toward politically acceptable conclusions. The last thing the Obama Administration wants is for a brilliant and charismatic scientist, like Richard Feynman to steal the show, by offering a dramatic demonstration of a politically embarrassing problem.

Thus only one real working scientist is included on the panel, that is Per Peterson. Peterson is well known to the Energy from Thorium community, and is an unabashed supporter of the use of Molten Salt nuclear technology. In addition to his expertise on Generation IV reactor design, and lowering nuclear costs, Per is also a nuclear proliferation expert, with a working knowledge of current thinking about proliferation prevention.

We know that the Yucca Mountain approach to the nuclear waste issue is off the table, and it appears quite likely that the IFR is as well. On January 15, the Defense Daily carried a story by George Lobsenz titled White House Moves To Restrict DoE Nuclear Research. That story stated:

The White House has proposed barring Energy Department research on fast reactor recycling of nuclear waste and technical support for licensing of small, modular light-water reactors, drawing protests from Energy Secretary Steven Chu that such prohibitions will have broad adverse effects, including hurting the U.S. nuclear industry's renaissance; crimping U.S. ability to influence other countries' fast reactor designs to address proliferation concerns; and taking away nuclear waste disposal options that might be considered by the administration's planned blue-ribbon panel on alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository.

The story went on to discuss what appeared to be a conflict between the Obama White House and Energy Secretary Chu over the exclusion of fast reactor research from the DoE Research program. This is very bad news for the IFR supporters, and might explain some of their recent behavior. Thus there are signs that the Blue Ribbon Commission will seriously consider Molten Salt nuclear technology, and the thorium fuel cycle as potential remedies for the fuel cycle nuclear waste issue. Above all else the panel is clearly expected to be a reliable, unimaginative, and boring extension of the Obama ego, that will reach predictable and unimaginative conclusions.

Not Ready for Prime Time Blue Ribbon Commission

I am not sure whether I should be discourage or encouraged by Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Blogger "uvdiv" has a negative assessment of many of the panel members, and many panel members are far less distinguished and gifted than could have been hoped. I had hoped for a energy panel chaired by Joe Biden, with members of the charisma and ability of Richard Feynman. In addition the panel reports to Secretary Chu, and not to the President. All of this suggests that the Mr. Obama does not yet know what he is doing.

In 2008, I several times suggested that a new Obama administration would need a Blue Ribbon Commission on energy. In a July 12, 2008 post titled T. Boone Pickens and a viable energy plan, After a discussion of the problem of renewables backup, and suggested that reactors would probably be the best renewables backups, i then wrote,

There is, however, a problem for renewables in the back up reactor approach. Why use reactors to back up renewables, when the very reliable reactors can do the whole job on their own? It would be cheaper, and perhaps far cheaper to build the entire system using only nuclear power. This is, I believe what a blue ribbon panel of wise people will conclude in response to President Obama's charge to come up with a solution to our energy issues shortly after January 20, next year.

I elaborated my ideas in two October 2008 posts titled, Focus I: Energy Decision Making and

Focus II: Vision. In the first post I wrote,

During the next few years our society faces basic choices on its energy future. The decisions have been long deferred. The decision making process should be finished by the end of the next administration, and implementation should be underway. The decision making process should be public, and should bring the best minds in the country to the table to share in the decision making process.

The decision making process should begin by identifying potentially valuable candidate technologies for resolution of components of the energy crisis. These technologies would include solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and other technologies for electrical generation; electrical and liquid fuels for transportation; solar, nuclear and other sources of process heat for Industry; and solar and electrical technologies for heating and cooling, In some cases the decision might not involve exclusive use of one technology. Air transportation would be impossible without liquid fuel, and without a carbon neutral liquid fuel technology we will simply loose the ability to achieve transportation through the air.

The decisions related to electricity generation will be perhaps the most important, because potentially up to 80% of the energy in a post carbon society will be transmitted through electrical lines. Decisions cannot be left to the market. The market, while providing efficient mechanisms to determine price, and product choice, is poorly equipped to make strategic choices for the future. Decision makers have to basically anticipate future markets. That involves informed guesses, something the market regards as speculation. Markets like to gamble only if there is a great deal of money potentially to be made on bets. There is far too much at risk, and too much uncertainty about the energy future at the moment for most investors to feel comfortable about the risks involved in future energy investments. In the case of solar and wind generated electricity, this has led to the demand for government subsidies, both for the construction of generating facilities, and in tax linked support of revenue produced from energy generation.

The stake in the decision making process is such that wrong decisions could easily lead to the misspending of tens, or hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps even trillions of dollars of tax payer, rate payer, and investor money, without the production of a satisfactory electrical system. Impossible you say. Well just pay careful attention to where the decision making process is today. Mark my word, if the decision making process is not improved, it will lead to very unsatisfactory outcome.

We cannot hope to reach a proper decision without a Judicious determination of facts, and there are at present a lot of of enemies of facts in the environment. Enemies of facts include people who are selling flawed ideas and flawed products. Fact finding needs to be turned over to people who are skilled in determining facts, and this would certainly include nobel prize winning scientists. Others who are somehow representative of the general public need to included among the fact finders, and the fact finding process needs to be open to the public. The fact finders need a first rate staff, and the ability to commission research.

The fact finders need to be aided by skilled politicians who have ascended to the rank of statesmen. My father observed one such politician while attending a hearing of Project Independence in 1974. "I was most impressed," my father wrote. "He is young, intelligent, and highly articulate." Such a figure, if he were still around 34 years later, might well prove a valuable asset to the fact finders, perhaps as chairman of a fact finding commission. And if the politician, by now an elder statesman, were to hold high political office, so much the better. The name of the young politician who so impressed my father was Joseph Biden.

Any group of fact finders would need to carefully separate fact from hype before reaching its decision. As I have demonstrated on Nuclear Green there is a lot of hype in our current discussion of energy options. In fact the hype to information ratio in any discussion of renewable electrical sources is astonishingly high.

During a discussion with wind advocate on The Oil Drum Wind advocate "Jerome a Paris"acknowledged that a basic assumption of wind advocates was an electrical grid to which a very large number of fossil fuel burning electrical generators were attached, which would pick up the slack when the wind does not blow. In this view the function of wind is to partially and temporarily defer fossil fuel burning rather than replace it.

It might be added that solar power also partially defers rather than replaces fossil fuel use. Nuclear reactors can replace fossil fuel fuel burning facilities.

Thus the choice between nuclear power and renewables is a choice between an approach designed to stop emitting CO2 in the generation of electricity, or to decrease the burning of carbon based fuels. This is a choice of fundamental importance and should be the focus of an important decision about energy.

My second post focused on what I called contagious visions, and the sort of people who can inspire them:

Focus on a resolution of the energy crisis must include a viable vision of the alternative energy future. That vision must be not only sharable but contagious. It is my assumption that the next president should and probable will set up "Blue Ribbon" fact finding commission to go about determining energy goals and steps required to accomplish preferred goals. The fact finders must possess the ability to go beyond facts and deal in the realm of human vision.

In order to motivate and coordinate the acts of millions of people over more than a generation, long range goals have to achieve a legitimacy. Such legitimate shared goals ought to be considered a vision, and the legitimacy of the vision ought to be understood to rest on a rational faith. A fact finding commission must seek "evidence of things unseen", since the future can only exist in vision, tangible reality only emerges through goal directed effort by groups of human beings. We live then in a time when the human ability to envision a future, emerges as our most important tool for the survival of the present form of American Society.

We are fortunate that we are about to install a national leader who is a gifted visionary, who possess exceptional talents for identifying viable collective goals, sharing a contagious vision of those goals, and implementing routes to the realization of those goals.

I assume that a figure of Barack Obama's astuteness would wish for a "fact finding commission" to sort out competing visions of the future. The function of the blue ribbon fact finders would be both to separate viable visions that will bring the American people to where they want to be from vision that are impractical or which would be deemed to yield unsatisfactory results.

Above all else the blue ribbon fact finders must not simply identify a vision but must begin the contagion process without which the vision will not be realized. They must also provide political leadership with political cover. There will be no doubt political opposition to the vision and the steps that will be taken to realize it. The first line of defense will be, "this is what the experts recommend". Because they are on the front line and ultimately exemplars, members of the blue ribbon commission must be selected for their courage, as well as their intelligence, capacity for rational thought, and vision. They will be exemplars for a nation and for the world, because it is anticipated that they will set a path on which all people will be traveling for the next 40 years.

It would be very nice to find a group of Richard Feynmans to set on the blue ribbon commission, people who are gifted visionaries, who have great respect for facts, and who have to the ability to ferret out the critical facts.

(In a speech which Richard Feynmen delivered on December 29th 1959, he foresaw the future:

I don't know how to do this on a small scale in a practical way, but I do know that computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can't we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements---and by little, I mean little. For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across. Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting---if they could be made to be more complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we would give to them. And in many other ways, they would have new qualitative features. . . .

But there is plenty of room to make them smaller. There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now. In fact, there may be certain advantages.

This then is a man of courage, intelligence, discernment and vision.

By the standard I sat out in October 2008, Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission and its mandate falls far short, but then it is perhaps not yet the right time. We need a couple of very hot years, supper 1998's, to bring the lesson home, and we need far greater awareness of the limitations of renewables, and of the desperateness of our situation. We need a President who is aware of all this, and who has some idea how to move the country and the world toward a a successful resolution of what can only be described as a great crises that threatens both the national and human future.

Lowering Nuclear Costs

I am a big fan of Barack Obama, but the folks who are advising him on his energy policy are playing him for a fool. Blogger "uvdiv" recently demonstrated the incongruity of Mr. Obama's message and its setting in a recent speech the President gave at a new Florida Power & Light Solar generating facility. In order to fully appreciate the unintentional Irony of the president's speech, the reader is also encouraged to read a post on it in Rod Adams' blog. Rod calculates that given a capacity factor of 25%,

the capital cost of the facility is roughly equivalent to paying $21,600 per kilowatt for a plant that has a capacity factor of 90%, which is a bit less than average for a US nuclear power plant.

Rod's calculation is probably low since it fails to take into account the effect of Florida's frequent cloud cover on the solar plants generating capacity. Given the huge cost of the solar facilities rather modest power output, the President's remark that the traditional grid

costs us too much money

seems downright absurd.

The president talked about

The President then ascended into the realm of the transcendentally silly.

a clean energy superhighway that can take the renewable power generated in places like De Soto and deliver it directly to the American people in the most affordable and efficient way possible.

Oh please, please, please Mr. President, tell us that you did not write that. Tell us that you did not think about what you were saying. The president talked about saving consumers $20 billion, saving $150 billion, cutting utility bills, without the slightest insight into the huge cost of the facility where he chose to make his speech.

The President clearly does not have a clue, furthermore he sets himself on the side of "Green" rhetoric, and against a sensible dialogue about our energy future.

I have to be honest with you, though. The closer we get to this new energy future, the harder the opposition's going to fight. The more we're going to hear from special interests and lobbyists in Washington whose interests are contrary to the interests of the American people.

There are those who are also going to suggest that moving toward a clean energy future is going to somehow harm the economy or lead to fewer jobs.

What the President does not seem to understand is that his view of the energy future is going to be enormously expensive, so expensive that it will be possible for this country to afford it, and ruinous if it tries.

In 2007 when I began to explore our national energy options, the high cost of the "green" renewable energy option quickly became clear. It also became quite clear to me that the cost of conventional nuclear power plants would be too high to make Light Water Reactors the technology of choice for carbon mitigation. This is not to say that Light Water Reactors are impossibly expensive. In fact the levelized cost of power produced from LWRs built during the next decade appears to be lower than the Levelized cost of Solar or wind generation facilities. The problem then is that all carbon replacement energy forms currently on the table are too expensive.

As I have noted else were, the current cost of reactor construction in India is already competitive with the cost of coal fired electrical generation plants, and improving the economies of scale of Indian reactors would appear to hold the promise of even lower capital costs. In addition Indian nuclear technology is rapidly developing, and it appears that India will be the first nation to develop a low cost thorium fuel cycle. It is clearly the case that unless the cost of post-carbon energy in the United States can be dramatically lowered, that the United States will become an economic backwater.

Given the high price of renewable electrical technology, and the high price of Light Water Reactors, alternative low cost electrical technology should be given the highest priority for the sake of maintaining the nation's economy. I have long been aware that advanced nuclear technologies were explored at American National Laboratories from the 1940's until the 1990's. These technologies were not rejected for technical reasons, but because they did not receive political support for their further development and implementation.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory regarded Molten Salt Reactor technology as being particularly promising. In 1967 ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg wrote:

Nuclear power, based on light-water-moderated converter reactors, seems to be an assured commercial success. This circumstance has placed upon the Atomic Energy Commission the burden of forestalling any serious rise in the cost of nuclear power once our country has been fully committed to this source of energy. It is for this reason that the development of an economical breeder, at one time viewed as a long-range goal, has emerged as the central task of the atomic energy enterprise. Moreover, as our country commits itself more and more heavily to nuclear power, the stake in developing the breeder rises—breeder development simply must not fail. All plausible paths to a successful breeder must therefore be examined carefully.

To be successful a breeder must meet three requirements. First, the breeder must be technically feasible. Second, the cost of power from the breeder must be low; and third, the breeder should utilize fuel so efficiently that a full-fledged-energy economy based on the breeder could be established without using high-cost ores. The molten-salt breeder appears to meet these criteria as well as, and in some respects better than, any other reactor system. Moreover, since the technology of molten-salt breeders hardly overlaps the technology of the solid-fueled fast reactor, its development provides the world with an alternate path to long-term cheap nuclear energy that is not affected by any obstacles that may crop up in the development of the fast breeder.

The molten-salt breeder, though seeming to be a by-way in reactor development, in fact represents the culmination of more than 17 years of research and development. The incentive to develop a reactor based on fluid fuels has been strong ever since the early days of the Metallurgical Laboratory. In 1958 the most prominent fluid-fuel projects were the liquid bismuth reactor, the aqueous homogeneous reactor, and the molten-salt reactor. In 1959 the AEC assembled a task force to evaluate the three concepts. The principal conclusion of their report was that the "molten-salt reactor has the highest probability of achieving technical feasibility."

This verdict of the 1959 task force appears to be confirmed by the operation of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment. To those who have followed the molten-salt project closely, this success is hardly surprising. The essential technical feasibility of the molten-salt system is based on certain thermodynamic realities first pointed out by the late R.C. Briant, who directed the ANP project at ORNL. Briant pointed out that molten fluorides are thermodynamically stable against reduction by nickel-based structural materials; that, being ionic, they should suffer no radiation damage in the liquid state; and that, having low vapor pressure and being relatively inert in contact with air, reactors based on them should be safe. The experience at ORNL with molten salts during the intervening years has confirmed Briant's chemical intuition. Though some technical uncertainties remain, particularly those connected with the graphite moderator, the path to a successful molten-salt breeder appears to be well defined.

We estimate that a 1000 MWe molten-salt breeder should cost $115 per kilowatt (electric) and that the fuel cycle cost ought to be in the range of 0.3 to 0.4 mill/kWh. The overall cost of power from a privately owned, 1000-MWe Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor should come to around 2.6 mills/kWh. In contrast to the fast-breeder, the extremely low cost of the MSBR fuel cycle hardly depends upon sale of byproduct fissile material. Rather, it depends upon certain advances in the chemical processing of molten fluoride salts that have been demonstrated either in pilot plants or laboratories: fluoride volatility to recover uranium, vacuum distillation to rid the salt of fission products, and for highest performance, but with somewhat less assurance, removal of protactinium by liquid-liquid extraction or absorption.

The molten-salt breeder, operating in the thermal Th-233U cycle, is characterized by a low breeding ratio: the maximum breeding ratio consistent with low fuel-cycle costs is estimated to be about 1.07. This low breeding ratio is compensated by the low specific inventory* of the MSBR. Whereas the specific inventory of the fast reactor ranges between 2.5 to 5 kg/MWe the specific inventory of the molten-salt breeder ranges between 0.4 to 1.0 kg/MWe. The estimated fuel doubling time for the MSBR therefore falls in the range of 8 to 50 years. This is comparable to estimates of doubling times of 7 to 30 years given in fast-breeder reactor design studies.

From the point of view of long-term conservation of resources, low specific inventory in itself confers an advantage upon the thermal breeder. If the amount of nuclear power grows linearly, the doubling time and the specific inventory enter symmetrically in determining the maximum amount of raw material that must be mined in order to inventory the whole nuclear system. Thus, low specific inventory is an essential criterion of merit for a breeder, and the detailed comparisons in the next section show that a good thermal breeder with low specific inventory could, in spite of its low breeding gain, make better use of our nuclear resources than a good fast breeder with high specific inventory and high breeding gain.

The molten salt approach to a breeder promises to satisfy the three criteria of technical feasibility, very low power cost, and good fuel utilization. Its development as a uniquely promising competitor to the fast breeder is, we believe, in the national interest.

It is our purpose in the remainder of this report to outline the current status of the technology, and to estimate what is required to develop and demonstrate the technology for a full-scale thermal breeder based on molten fluorides.

Less than two years after Dr. Weinberg wrote these encouraging words, the Nixon Administration began to shut down Molten Salt Reactor research in Oak Ridge.

Except for the cost estimate number, little appears to have changed in the prospect for this technology. Reviving the development of Molten Salt Reactor technology would be relatively inexpensive, and the cost savings potentially could be enormous.

President Obama needs to stop floundering around delivering silly speeches about his failing energy policy. He needs to find a new policy direction, one which will lead to low cost energy.

Obama Deserves an F on Energy Policy

The Obama administration is off to a truly disastrous start on its energy policy. It has accepted the delusion notion that supporting nuclear energy is somehow anti-progressive while giving preference to so called renewable energy sources is good policy.

Here are Obama's energy delusions. Mr. Obama appears to believe that the problems of conventional nuclear power are crippling compared to renewables. That is not the case. In facts renewables are crippled by their intermittency, while nuclear power is reliable.

The Obama administration is concerned about the problem of nuclear waste management. But under the current system nuclear waste is stored safely, and poses far less of a danger to human health and safety and to the environment than waste from coal fired steam plants.

The Obama administration is overly concerned by nuclear safety, but by any objective standard America's 104 power reactors have proven to be extremely safe.

The Obama administration is concerned about nuclear costs, but the cost of making renewables reliable enough to assure America 24 hour a day power will make renewables more expensive than conventional nuclear power.

The Obama administration believes itself to be well informed about energy issues. In fact it is basing policy on half-baked energy approaches. The flaws in the renewable approaches now in favor should be clear to anyone who begins by asking obvious questions like where is the power going to come from when the wind does not blow, or when the sun goes down at night. And of course the Obama staff has not yet asked how much this is going to cost.

Barack Obama was elected to put an end to the non-deliberative policy approach of the Bush administration. So far, however, the Obama administration's attitude toward energy has been anything but fact based. Let us recall Ron Suskind's account of the Bush staffer:

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

The Obama administration has not yet engaged in a judicious determination of the facts about energy. Confident in their own power and in their ability to set policy on whim, they have decided to follow what will surely be a disastrous policy if followed long term. We can only hope that during the next few years, as America's war to assure itself an energy future becomes obviously more difficult, and Mr. Obama's ability to see his own mistakes, admit them and correct them will come and prevent a disaster. If not we are headed out into the wilderness without food or water. Leading people toward disaster surely is not progressive.

The Obama Energy Policy

I did not expect Barack Obama's energy policies to be impressive, and Mr. Obama has not exceeded my expectation in that regard. Most democratic rhetoric regarding energy has consisted of shallow recitation of the Amory Lovins cult line, with a bone tossed to nucleare. Thus we have all sorts of suppositions about energy that have not been carefully researched. We have contradictions in our carbon goals, cult like faith in energy efficiency, a gross underestimation of the cost of renewable generated energy, and a gross underestimation of the size of the task.

Mr. Obama spent two of his four years in the Senate campaigning the presidency. He simply has not had the time to learn about energy issues. His energy policies worked practically as tools for his quest for the White House. In 2000 Ralph Nader taught the Democrats to not alienate the "Green" voters. Greens are of course crazy, but they do vote. In 2000 Nader and the Greens sold Al Gore, the Democratic Party, and ultimately the environment down the river, with the idiotic claim that Gore was no different on te environment than Bush. The Obama energy policy was designed to not alienate "Green" voters, rather than to confront the nation with hard energy choices. Before he can confront the Nation, Mr. Obama has to on front the choices himself. The Good thing about Obama is not having looked at the issue clearly, it is unlikely that he has formed strong convictions and prejudices about energy. Mr. Obama is very intelligent, he appears to learn his lessons well, and so far he has surroundd himself with tallented advisors. Lets hope hat continues to be so, as he begins to confront energy issues.

My expectation is that energy will gradually become more urgent during the next four years. By 2012 energy will be the number one priority, and the nation will be preparing to go on a quasi-war time footing to meet the energy challenge. This will e a drastic change from the current attitude which is laxidasical. Thinking about energy should be very different by 2012 with many of the current assumptions largely forgotten. If there is not consensus by 2012 that nuclear energy is the primary solution to the American energy future by 2012, then the nation will be in deep trouble. The next four years will be a time for public enlightenment, and Mr. Obama would be well served to both participate inand lead the enlightenment process.

Obama's Greatest Task: Winning the Energy War

The American Election is over and the next president, Mr. Barack Obama, faces an extremely daunting set of problems. The most obvious is an economic crises that still threatens to spiral into an international depression. It is not yet clear that the disaster has been avoided, but quite obviously the problems that lie at the heart of the crises are still with us. The real problem is the structure of the world economy. The current world economy is unsustainable because it depends on American borrowing to purchase foreign manufactured goods. Since American businesses have decided that they can keep prices lower, by shipping manufacturing jobs abroad. But since we no longer manufacture things, we have nothing to trade for the goods we want. Since we Americans cannot pay for things we buy through trade, we have to borrow money to buy Japanese cars, and Chinese manufactured TV sets. But we have ultimately no way to repay the loans.

Foreign lenders are hungry for investment opportunities in the United States, and hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign loans are pouring into the American economy. Americans are no ones fools, and if a bank is willing to offer me a mortgage to pay for a much larger home at a fire sale rate, we are going to take the money and run. Foreign investment has paid for American real estate inflation, but the bubble, in an unproductive economy, could not last forever. The Obama Administration must address the structural problems of the international trading system, but beyond that it must lay the groundwork for a new American Industrial revolution, one which again makes the United States a center of international industrial production, and a major source of industrial goods in the world trading system. Those structural changes in the world and the American economies will not come without a great deal of pain.

In order for the United States to restore its industrial productivity, its energy problems must be solved. Our political leadership already knew in the 1970's that we faced an energy crises. M. King Hubbert had projected an eventual decline in both American and world oil production in 1949. In December 1957 when Edward Teller spoke to the American Chemical Society, he noted a that world use of carbon based fuels posed a serious problem for the future of society. Teller simply stated what scientist knew for all of the 20th century, that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas, and by adding it to the atmosphere we were creating a condition that would make our planet warmer.

Today, both Hubbert's and Teller's predictions are coming to pass. World production of oil can only keep pace with world oil production in a depressed economy. The world transportation economies are based on technologies that are unsustainable. With ever declining oil production, oil fueled air, sea and land transportation systems will start grinding to a halt, unless substitute power systems are designed and put in place. World society has not even begun to do that yet, and we have already seen the first wave of the peek oil crisis.

Facing the peak oil and global warming crises will require a great deal of rethinking about our basic assumptions about the economy, society and the political system. M. King Hubbart pointed out:

"The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evloved from folkways of prehistoric origin.

"The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The second, an inheritance from the prescientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is super[im]posed.

"Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely, exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest. This disparity between a monetary system which continues to grow exponentially and a physical system which is unable to do so leads to an increase with time in the ratio of money to the output of the physical system. This manifests itself as price inflation. A monetary alternative corresponding to a zero physical growth rate would be a zero interest rate. The result in either case would be large-scale financial instability."

"With such relationships in mind, a review will be made of the evolution of the world's matter-energy system culminating in the present industrial society. Questions will then be considered regarding the future:

What are the constraints and possibilities imposed by the matter-energy system? human society sustained at near optimum conditions?
Will it be possible to so reform the monetary system that it can serve as a control system to achieve these results?

If not, can an accounting and control system of a non-monetary nature be devised that would be approptirate for the management of an advanced industrial system?
"It appears that the stage is now set for a critical examination of this problem, and that out of such inquries, if a catastrophic solution can be avoided, there can hardly fail to emerge what the historian of science, Thomas S. Kuhn, has called a major scientific and intellectual revolution."

In is not in any ordinary age that Barack Obama will step into the office of the Presidency. By the way the name Barack means lightening in Hebrew. Lets how that he can electrify the world. Doing so will require every bit of his very considerable talent. He must lead the world as if we were at war, and he must do no less than lead us into a new energy age. This is a task that is fully comparable to national and global leadership during World War II Franklin D. Roosevelt played during World War II. Our energy war will not be against other people, but rather it will be against the human misery that we will see if we do not win the war. The energy war is Mr. Obama's to win or loose, and on that victory rests the fate of human society.