Third Thorium Energy Alliance marks rapid progress toward fulfillment of dreams

My health, although still not as good as I would like has been improving since my hospitalization last December. I am, however, not in good enough health to travel. This is unfortunate because I would very much have liked to attend the Third Thorium Energy AllianceConference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Energy from Thorium has a brief account of the Conference in Energy from Thorium. In addition the Thorium Energy Alliance has posted Power Point Presentations from the Conference on its web page. Judging from the presentations it is probably safe to say that Molten Salt Reactor technology has entered the age of entrepreneurs.

Presentations by Kirk Sorensen, DavidLe Blanc and Charles S Holden indicated that they were either currently involved in entrepreneurial activities or were seeking entrepreneurial opportunities. Kirk has left Teledyne Brown to found a company, Flibe Energy, the purpose of Flibe is to product LFTRs and perhaps uranium fueled MSRs. The relationship between Teledyne Brown and Flibe is not clear, but the money to pay Kirk's salary has to come from somewhere. The Flibe prospectus indicates that the company founders envisage going after such markets as isolated communities, and medical isotopes, as well as stable fission product sales.

Charles "Rusty" Holden probably wants to go after some of the Same Markets Kirk is targeting. Holden's company, Thorenco LLC, is planning to build a 40 MW MSR. The reactor is designed to produce about 15 MWe at maximum. Holden intends to come out of the starting gate with a full LFTR. The reactor is a pool type reactor which involves a large pool of molten coolant salts acting as a thermal sink. I am not a big fan of pool type reactors, although they are safe. This is safety at a cost. The coolant pool will contain 93,200 Liters of coolant salt which will weigh 450 tons. The function of the pool is far from clear since the reactor design includes a dump tank.

The reactor core contains no graphite, Moderation will be by Beryllium in the form of BeF2 in the salts. This is a two fluid reactor with blanket salts doubling as coolants. The core structure uses metal (no doubt Hastelloy N) tubing. With the tubes containing fuel salts surrounded by outer tubes containing coolant salts. Since there is no core core graphite, neutron speed will be relatively bast, likely falling in the Epithermal range. The core is surrounded by a thorium reflector, neutron absorption in the reflector converts some thorium into U-233. The reactor will be a converter, and will require 1600 kilograms of U-233 fissile load, which is an enormous amount given the modest amount of U-233 14 kgs per year, which the reactor will burn,

At this point I will stop, and pronounce Holden's reactor DOA. Too much material goes into it, and too little electricity will come out. Fundamental questions are left unanswered, for example startup. 1600 kgs of U-233 is probably more U-233 than exists in the whole world right now. Where is the U-233 going to come from? There are quite a few more problems and questions. As David LeBlanc noted in his Conference talk, "Softer Spectrum" means "much smaller fissile start up." David is still on the outside looking for an opportunity. In his Conference talk, David noted,

␣ Corporate interest will always be difficult to attract
␣ No lucrative fuel fabrication contracts
␣ Min 15 year return on investment a tough sell to shareholders (no matter how big the return may be)
␣ Existing nuclear players have their choices in place

Money is still the hard part, at least for now. Despite this enormous progress is being made by LFTR/MSR advocates. A month ago, Kirk Sorensen marked the fifth anniversary of Energy from Thorium. At that time a handful of people knew what thorium was. Even fewer knew about Molten Salt Reactors. Kirk set out to educate people using social media tools, and others followed his lead. What Kirk has managed to do is to start a bottom up social movement.

Where are we headed? Japanese Researcher Takashi Kamei of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan offered some answers in the wake of the great Japanese earthquake-tsunami of 2011, not to mention the crisis related to Fukushima reactors. Takashi pictures MSRs beginning a rapid increase around 2025and with the number of LFTRs growing more slowly before 2050. He also suggests a growing number of LFTRs after 2035. Takashi estimates a total MSR output of 258 GWe to 317 GWe by 2050. My view is that much more is possible. The future will belong to the dreamers.

The Molten Salt Reactor Family: Two Fluid Reactors

The two fluid Molten Salt Reactor uses separate fluids for fuel and carrier salts. In the two fluid desige, two seperate salt fluids are present in the MSR core. The first is the fuel carrier, that is it contains one or more fissionable isotope. U-233, U-239 or Pu-239. A second fluid carries a fertile material, in MSRs always Th-232. There were from the start a numbr of advantages to the two fluid approach, as David LeBlanc points out,

Advantages

* Much more practical fission product processing without thorium in fuel salt
* Have choice of Vacuum Distillation or Simplified Liquid Bismuth Extraction
* Strongly negative temperature/void fuel salt reactivity constants
* Pa removal easily avoided by simply increasing volume of blanket salt Neutron leakage near zero

There were also a number of disadvantages,

Disadvantages

* Interlacing of fuel and blanket salt within core is the “Plumbing Problem”
* Blanket salt has positive temperature/void coefficients
* Need for extra heat transfer loop for the blanket salt (5-10% of heat load)

The carrier salt is referred to as the blanket salt. David LeBlanc pointed out that one advantage of a two fluid design is that protactinium need not be removed immediately from the blanket salt, while its presence effects both the nuclear process and the chemistry of the one fluid design.

Protactinium 233 is the 27 day half life intermediate between fertile Thorium and fissile U233. The problem is that it has a moderately high cross section for absorption, such that if it stays in the reactor loop, it may capture a neutron and not become U233. The average neutron flux the Pa sees is the main factor on how many neutrons will be lost. By increasing the volume of salt that carries the Thorium, one can lower these losses and skip this processing step. However, in a Single Fluid design if one increases the salt volume (by a lower power density core etc.) then this also increases the amount of fissile U233 needed at the same time.

In a 2 Fluid design with Thorium only in the blanket salt, one can increase its volume which does not increase how much U233 is needed. This is a financial burden in terms of carrier salt and Thorium but it is by no means excessive.

Skipping the Pa removal step is important for two main reasons. First, the process must be done very quickly, on the order of processing the whole volume of carrier salt in3 to 10 days. This is an enormous technical and economic challenge. Second is that this introduces a unique proliferation risk. When U233 is produced while in the reactor, significant quantities of U232 are also present. This is highly radioactive and leads to an extremely strong gamma ray being emitted. This would make working with the material extremely difficult if not impossible and also make detection of illicit material easily detectable. However, if the Pa is removed and allowed to decay outside the reactor it produces relatively clean U233.

Despite the disadvantages of the single fluid reactor in the late 1960's ORNL leaders felt that they were in competition with Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors, championed by Argonne National Laboratory. The LMFBR had some significant disadvantages, but it did feature a high breeding ratio, much higher, in fact than the breeding ratio of thermal cycle thorium breeders. Thus the slight theoretical breeding advantage of the single fluid MSR was attractive to them. Then ORNL scientists discovered

Liquid Bismuth reductive extraction process.

And although difficult, indeed quite possibly extremely difficult, it offered a route to staying in the breeder game for a little while. The breeder competition was itself evidence of the incompetence of the American Nuclear establishment. The LMFBR was a failure, that ended up costing billions of dollars only to end up being too expensive to build even a prototype. It could not compete with the MSR as far as safety or reprocessing technology. Eventually scientists at Argonne National Laboratory were to scrap the old LMFBR concept, and develop a new sodium cooled fast breeder design, the Integral Fast Reactor, that came much closer to matching many MSR advanced features. By that time the MSR was nothing more than a large series of research reports, and a shutdown prototype awaiting decommissioning.

At any rate, the ORNL two fluid MSR design from the 1960's was a very advanced reactor design that still looks very futuristic. reactor design. The design featured a 1000 MW power station, powered by 4 modular 250 MW two fluid MSRs. The motive for the modular design was not the cost advantage of factory production although ORNL researchers were no doubt aware of that. Rather, there intention was

replacement of an entire reactor vessel assembly after the core graphite received its allowable exposure to neutrons. [After] . . . about eight years of full-power operation.

ORNL 3996 stated,

An important factor in low power costs is the ability of the power plant t o maintain a high plant-availability factor. Thus design features
that can improve this factor are desirable if these features do not themselves introduce compensating disadvantages.

A four Modular Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MMSBR) facility will clearly more reliable than a one reactor facility. If one reactor is down, 750 MWs of electrical power would still be available, while in a single reactor one GW plant the down reactor would mean that no power would be available.

Like all two fluid MSRs, the OENL Modular Molten Salt Breeder Reactor two fluid reactor design divided its core into reactive and blanket regions. A blanket suggests that the core would have an inner region for fissionable materials and an outer region for fertile materials. This was not in fact the case in the ORNL modular design. The graphite in the core was divided up into tubes and core and blanket tubes were interlaced. This feature was not viable. Graphite shrinks and then swells under neutron bombardment. This caused ORNL MSR designers one huge headache, because the core plumbing would vary in size as the graphite evolved, this would effect regional power output within the core in unpredictable ways, and introduce an unacceptable level of uncertainty into reactor operations. ORNL-4528 noted,

The major concern was whether mechanical failure of graphite tubes in the reactor core would cause the effective lifetime of the core to be significantly less than the eight years imposed by the effects of irradiation on the graphite.

ORNL-4528 added,

The change in radial dimensions presented a more difficult problem. Densification of the graphite to produce a 2.5% reduction in distance across the flats of the hexagonal tubes would cause the fraction of the cross section of the core occupied by fuel cells to decrease by 5%, and the space occupied by the blanket salt would increase correspondingly. For the reactor with an average power density of 20 kw/liter, the volume fractions in the core would change from 0.802 to 0.762 for graphite, 0.134 t o 0.127 for fuel salt, and 0.064 to 0.111 for blanket salt. Changes of equal magnitude, but opposite in direction, would occur during the expansion phase. The rates of change of dimensions would vary with local power density, so at no time during the life of a core would the volume fractions corresponding to the maximum contraction or expansion exist throughout the core. At the end of life the graphite at the center of the core would have reached its maximum volume; graphite in the regions of average power density would be about at its minimum volume, and graphite in the outer fuel cells would be about halfway into the contraction stage.

ORNL 4528 explained,

Under irradiation the isotropic graphite being con-sidered at the time of these studies would decrease in volume by 7.5% during the contraction stage and then would increase in volume by as much as 7.5% over its initial volume by the end of its useful life. These changes in volume correspond to changes in linear dimensions of M.5% over the initial dimensions and create several design problems.

The MMSBR was intended to be a true breeder and depending on core design could breed at about a 1.05 or 1.06 ratio, with a fissile inventory as low as 220 kgs, or about a ton of U-233 per GW of rated electrical output. This was spectacular, but a larger core would mean longer graphite life and would nearly double the fissile inventory of the MMSBR. In order to capture every spare neutron, 150 times as much thorium was to be pumped through the MMSR core. The fissile inventory performance of the MMSBR is quite impressive when compared to that of recent French Fast Molten Salt Reactor designs that require as much as a six times larger fissile inventory. Sodium cooled fast breeders require a fissil inventory of as much as ten times as large.

Thus we have seen that the two fluid ORNL MMSBR although promising posed some significant materials and design problems. There was no advance in two fluid MSR design for nearly 40 years, until Canadian Physicist David LeBlanc proposed a radical change in two Fluid MSR core design. The old two fluid design had a diameter of 10 feet or more, while LeBlances new design had a diamiter of one meter.

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The LeBlanc tube core represents a potential breakthrough in reactor core design. It is extremely simple and manufacturing costs would be mainly material costs. The core itself could be built in a day. It can either be graphite moderated, coolant moderated or fast.

A recent paper by Reactor researchers from the Czech Republic, Jan Frybort and Radim Vocka argued that some problems of the ORNL MMSBR could be solved, while pointing out a new and previously unrecognized safety problem. The Paper, titled Neutronic Analysis of Two-Fluid Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (See Kirk Sorensen's discussion). Kirk summarizes,

In part 4A, they found that the temperature coefficient was strongly negative and that the breeding factor was good. In part 5, they looked at changing the design to improve it, and found that by making the fuel channels bigger than the original design, they improved nearly all parameters. This is an important result, since it’s not often that you change a parameter and find improvements in nearly all outputs from that parameter.

And then notes,

In part 7 of the paper, they mention the second key issue with a two-fluid reactor–the problem of the blanket void coefficient. Since the original ORNL design had the problem, and since they modeled only parametric variations on that original design, it’s no surprise that the problem still shows up. It must be fixed, probably through a new design approach to the two-fluid reactor. I have some ideas, most all of them based around physical situations where a loss of blanket fluid leads to a loss of moderation. I anticipate that this could be done by floating moderator elements (graphite) in the blanket salt, so that as the level of the blanket salt falls, the moderation decreases more than the absorption decreases from the loss of blanket. These ideas definitely need more modeling, but I think they are essentially sound.

Would the same effect apply to David LeBlanc's two shell design? Probably not. The Blanket void, positive coefficient of reactivity problem stems from the interlacing of blanket and fissionable salts in the MMSBR. David LeBlanc does not interlace blanket and core salts, thus a blanket void would not seem to increase core neutrons. A simple solution to the problem in the ORN design would be to keep core salt tubes in the center of the tube array, while blanket salt tubes form a ring around them on the outside. I suspect that Kirk has something like this in mind as his solution to the blanket salt void problem. At any rate, the two blanket solution appears to be alive and a very promising path toward a nuclear future.

David LeBlanc at ORNL, May 2010

Update: See this recent interview with David Le Blanc.

David LeBlanc

David LeBlanc offered a lecture reflecting his latest thinking on MSR/LFTR technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in May. David's slides are nor available, as is a video of his lecture. this was a terrific lecture, and well worth studying. (Note there appears to be a bug in a 64 bit Microsoft codix, that drops the sound. The video can be down loaded and played with imperfect sound on aVLC player. Hopefully ORNL will clear this problem up.)

Phoenix Rising

I attended David LeBlanc's lecture at ORNL yesterday (May 18, 2010).

Jess Gehin, our host, took the opportunity to do a set of show-and-tell presentations about molten-salt-related programs at ORNL. It is safe to say, from what I saw yesterday, that the phoenix is rising at ORNL.

David's talk was exciting. David has been in contact with retired ORNL MSR researcher Dick Engel. Dick participated in the ORNL 1980 fling at getting backing for Molten Salt Reactor development, the DMSR. (For documentation of the DMSR concept, see here, here, here and here.) David notes in his Mechanical Engineering article,

The “D” stands for “denatured”—the uranium in the reactor contains too much U-238 to be useful in weapons. The concept also dispenses with processing the salt to remove fission products; the same salt is used throughout the 30-year life of the reactor with small amounts of low enriched uranium added each year to keep the fissile material constant. The amount of uranium fuel needed—about 35 metric tons per GWe year—is only one-sixth of what is used by a pressurized water reactor. . . .

The amount of fissile material needed to start new reactors is also very important, especially in terms of a rapid fleet expansion. The 1 GWe DMSR was designed for 3.5 metric tons of U-235 (in easy-to-obtain low-enriched uranium) which can be lowered if uranium costs go up. A new PWR, by contrast, needs about 5 metric tons, whereas a sodium-cooled fast breeder such as the PRISM design requires as much as 18 tons of either U-235 or spent fuel plutonium. Any liquid fluoride reactor can be started on plutonium as well, but this turns out to be an expensive option, since removing plutonium from spent fuel costs around $100,000 per kilogram.

Reviewing the DMSR from a 2010 perspective, LeBlanc finds many advantages.

The DMSR features a larger, lower power density graphite core than other MSR breeder concepts. So while the graphite would last a full 30 years, the DMSR would still be only a fraction of the size of gas-cooled graphite reactors and would not require a pressure vessel. In fact, the simple thin-walled DMSR containment vessel would be wider but much shorter than those of PWRs and BWRs. The construction of the reactor containment building offers savings as it does not need the huge volume and ability to deal with steam pressure buildup needed for LWRs or CANDU reactors.

The overall thermal efficiency of the plant would be quite high. With a salt outlet of 700 °C and using the latest ultra-supercritical steam cycles or gas Brayton cycles, efficiencies close to 50 percent would be possible.

While up-to-date cost estimates for a molten salt reactor are not available, it is quite simple to see the potential overall advantages. The DMSR needs no capital and O&M costs for fuel processing, and the superior nature of the salts as coolants results in far smaller heat exchangers and pumps. Building and fabrication costs should be lower than conventional nuclear plants, since the design doesn’t put the same sort of stresses on the system.

Among the advantages LeBlanc points out, the potential to lower nuclear costs is the most conspicuous.

It is not unreasonable, then, to assume that capital costs could be 25 to 50 percent less for a simple DMSR converter design than for modern light water reactors. Compared to fast breeders such as the integral fast reactor, which rarely try to claim low capital costs, the DMSR should be even better.

In his ORNL talk, LeBlanc noted the possibility of simply eliminating a Thorium blanket for the DMSR entirely, and running the DMSR as a pure uranium-fuel cycle reactor. While the Uranium fuel cycle DMSR would offer less sustainable technology than the LFTR, it would be a very strong competitor for the current generation of Light Water Reactors. It would offer a very high level of safety, proliferation resistance and nuclear waste control, at a lower cost that current light-water reactor technology. Actinides, the big problem in nuclear waste, could be separated from reactors salts, either periodically or when the reactor is decommissioned. The recovered actinides can be returned to the core of a DMSR where they will be burned as nuclear fuel. Other fission products will essentially disappear after 300 years, if reactor managers chose to treat them as waste, but this is unlikely. Fission products present in "spent nuclear fuel" represent a potential source of valuable materials and noble gases, and the DMSR concept opens the door for the recovery of these minerals.

LeBlanc concluded his Mechanical Engineering essay by declaring,

Molten salt or liquid fluoride reactors will also take a large effort, but every indication points to a power reactor that will excel in cost, safety, long-term waste reduction, resource utilization, and proliferation resistance. As we move deeper into a century that portends financial instability, political uncertainty, environmental catastrophe, and resource depletion, this technology is too valuable to once again place back on the shelf.

Nuclear Green concurs with this view. The DMSR represents a technology that is doable in the year 2010. The technology required to build it exists now, thus developers would not be saddled with huge R&D costs, and and the technological uncertainties that would confront LFTR development. The DMSR would represent a transition, between the traditional solid fuel reactors, and the sustainable LFTR technology. The Phoenix is beginning to rise from its ashes.

David LeBlanc: ORNL and Too Good to Leave on the Shelf

David LeBlanc of the Physics department of Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada and the Ottawa Valley Research Associates, Ltd., is a highly regarded participant in Energy from Thorium discussions and a reactor scientist of considerable note. David is notable because of a significant accomplishment. He has simplified the reactor core to a point beyond which further simplifications are likely to prove impossible. David's reactor core is nothing more than two metal shells, one inside the other. A fluid fuel carrier/moderator/coolant flow into the inner shell, and then out again. A fluid containing fertile thorium flows in a and out the second, outer shell. That is it. The entire core structure is composed of two sheets of shaped metal, one surrounding the other, with openings through which a very hot salt fluid is designed to flow. In the inner chamber, fissionable material that is chemically bonded to the carrier salt becomes critical.

No control rods are control rods are required to control David's reactor, because the inherent properties of the carrier/coolant salt automatically provide feedback that can control reactivity within the core and even shut the reactor down completely.

David is scheduled to give a talk titled, Molten Salt Reactors: An Exploration of Design Space

on May 18, at ORNL.

The abstract David's talk states:

This talk will first review past and current molten salt reactor design principles covering the main development period at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as well as more recent work such as the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor of France (now called the Molten Salt Fast Reactor) and the FUJI concepts of Japan. Two new proposed design routes will then be presented. First a novel but simple core geometry modification to solve the issues that led to the abandonment of ORNL's Two Fluid efforts of the mid-1960's. Two Fluid designs have separate salts to carry the fertile thorium and fissile 233U and which benefit from greatly simplifying fission product removal but previously called for unworkable core architecture. Secondly, the untapped potential of ORNL's late 1970's work on denatured converter reactors termed DMSRs and proposed improvements will be presented. This more conservative route will be shown to also have attractive resource sustainability and long-lived waste reduction while requiring the minimum of development work and maximizing proliferation resistance.

In addition to his pending ORNL talk, David is the author of a new article in the May 2010 issue of Mechanical Engineering, "Too Good to Leave on the Shelf.". The Article offers a brief history of the ORNL Molten Salt adventure, some fascinating pictures,

Alvin Weinberg and the ORNL MSRE at 6000 hours of operation.

and David's own ingenious solution to a vexing problem that frustrated ORNL researchers in the 1960's. David also discusses the highly proliferation resistant DMSR, which has recently occupied his interest. He states

The amount of fissile material needed to start new reactors is also very important, especially in terms of a rapid fleet expansion. The 1 GWe DMSR was designed for 3.5 metric tons of U-235 (in easy-to-obtain low-enriched uranium) which can be lowered if uranium costs go up. A new PWR, by contrast, needs about 5 metric tons, whereas a sodium-cooled fast breeder such as the PRISM design requires as much as 18 tons of either U-235 or spent fuel plutonium. Any liquid fluoride reactor can be started on plutonium as well, but this turns out to be an expensive option, since removing plutonium from spent fuel costs around $100,000 per kilogram.

The DMSR features a larger, lower power density graphite core than other MSR breeder concepts. So while the graphite would last a full 30 years, the DMSR would still be only a fraction of the size of gas-cooled graphite reactors and would not require a pressure vessel. In fact, the simple thin-walled DMSR containment vessel would be wider but much shorter than those of PWRs and BWRs. The construction of the reactor containment building offers savings as it does not need the huge volume and ability to deal with steam pressure buildup needed for LWRs or CANDU reactors.

Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea

David LeBlanc has joined the Google Tech Talk roster with an excellent presentation on LFTR?MSR technology. David does an excellent job of exploring the diversity of technological options and their rational and value.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So

From The Abstract:
David's Ph.d in physics was completed at University of Ottawa (1998) on high temperature superconductors. During this period, he developed a great interest to pursue both fission and fusion reactor design basics, which separately cumulated in a long term fellowship from the Canadian Fusion Fuels Technology Project (later ITER Canada) for his work on the use of high Tc superconductors in the fusion field and also work for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited on worldwide reactor design comparisons. Since then he has been teaching at the Carleton University physics department and continued his investigations primarily in the field of Molten Salt Reactors, also known as Liquid Fluoride Reactors. David founded Ottawa Valley Research Associates Ltd to expand these efforts and has completed a license agreement with a European firm with a goal of development of a new generation of Molten Salt Reactors.

If you design it small, they will come

Rod Adams has had the right idea for a long time. Make reactors small, Rod keeps saying. Of course Rod's small is my mini. Rod has focused on reactors under 100 MWe. My interest is in Reactors in the 100 to 300 MWe size range. In addition to our reactors being small in output, I see a big advantage in small physical size. My focus on smallness started out with the idea that reactors could be built more quickly and more cheaply in factories than on site. Factory construction favors small, compact and easily transportable reactors. The transportable part limited upward size. Size does not have to be fixed. Dr. David LeBlanc has some interesting ideas on LFTR design. david's basic idea is both simple and ingenious. Build a reactor with a simple cylindrical core. The core is surrounded by a thorium salt blanket. The cylindrical core design would allow factory built reactors to varie in power output simply by elongating the core cylinder.

Dr. LeBlanc's design can easily be built as medium size reactors. LeBlanc has calculated that a core that is one meter (a littleover a yard) in diameter, and six meters (20 feet) long could produce 400 MWs of electrical output. Such a core would be easily transportable and would cost next to nothing to build. David's core is so cheap to build that he contemplates replacing it every 20 years or so, because radiation will inevitably damage its metalic structure.

David is talking about other cost containment measures, including the use of lower cost materials, this would bring the LFTR out of the breeding range, but there is plenty of plutonium in LWR fuel that can be burned to make up the difference. I wrote David that if costs could be lowered enough, the low cost low burn molten salt reactor - could potentially make an excellent peak load producer, that could also provide backup for renewable generators. Periodic power production would actually prolong the life of core materials, and of course with the ability of MSRs to be at peak heat while at standby mode, and build nuclear reaction as heat is transfered from reactor salys to the electrical generating system, David's low cost MSR could come on line from renewables back up mode as quickly as the closed cycle gas turbine can ramp up speed.

David LeBlanc's simple design concept could be built in varying sizes. The cylinder could simply be longer or shorter. The whole reactor package could be quickly built in factories as modules, trucked or shipped by rail to the set up site, and then the modules could be assembled in a few weeks. Since the MSR/LFTR is very compact, the containment structure would be small. The inherent safety and self controlling features of the MSR/LFTR are such that it does not require an onsite operations staff, further limiting the need for large structures to house a large staff. Reactors can be clustered, thus allowing for the production of the power equivalent of a vary large LWR, without the drawback of a huge loss of power to the grid system when a single reactor shuts down.

There is little doubt that David LeBlanc's radical reactor design would have a competitive edge on natural gas fired electrical backup generators, currently used for back up power generation, on fuel costs. The natural gas generators would probably have the edge on capital costs. But would capital costs disadvantage knock David LeBlanc's reactor out of competition? As it is, natural gas cost make the gas fired turbine back up and peak load power plants very expensive t0o operate. Add to the cost of natural gas a carbon tax, and you have real insentives for power companies to look for back up and peak load alternatives. So yes, Dr. LeBlanc is able to design a reactor generating system that can be factory built at a low cost, he might very well have invented the electrical peak load, and backup system of the future. Dr. LeBlanc could very well afford to let the base load generator market go, because the demand for peak load generating capacity far exceeds the demand for base load generators. But David's basic design is so flexible, that by altering the core component of his reactor, it could be a baee load power source. The base load core would be more expensive, because it would be expected to pump out power 24 hours a day. But the advantages of serial production of other reactor modules, would lower overall costs.

Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, former General Partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, current honcho of his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, agrees with much of what I have been saying about renewables.

Khosla is on record as favoring nuclear power and criticizing environmentalists for their opposition to it:

For every nuclear plant that environmentalists avoided, they ended up causing two coal plants to be built. That’s the history of the last 20 years. Most new power plants in this country are coal, because the environmentalists opposed nuclear. When you ask someone like the NRDC, ‘Do you prefer nuclear or coal?’ They’ll say ‘We prefer nuclear to coal, but we don’t want either.’ It doesn’t work that way; we need power.

They’d like to see wind and solar photovoltaics. Well, it doesn’t work if it’s 40 cents a kilowatt hour, and it doesn’t work if you have to tell PG&E’s customers: ‘We’ll ship you power when the wind’s blowing and the sun’s shining, but otherwise, you gotta miss your favorite soap opera or NFL game.’ That’s just the reality, so you have to be pragmatic about this. What is the most cost-effective way to do it?

When Mother Jones ask Khosla MJ:

Would you rather live next to a nuclear power plant or a coal burning plant?

he answered,

Nuclear, and it's not even close. Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.

(Hint to David and Kirk: Khosla is looking for what he calls black swans, revolutionary and unforeseen ideas that change the world as we know it. And Vinod Khosla is not shy about advertising his email address on the Internet. It is vk@khoslaventures.com. I'll bet he would be excited to talk to you.)