MSR/LFTR Development: Moir Again

Ralph Ralph Moir, building on work by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Forsberg, and Furukawa et al., set out larger scale MSR/LFTR developmental issues, in "Recommendations for a restart of molten salt reactor development", (Energy Conversion and Management 49 (2008) 1849–1858).

Dr. Moir had completed a prior study on the economics power production with the ORNL MSBR design,
"Cost of electricity from Molten Salt Reactors (MSR)", (Nuclear Technology 138 93-95 (2002)10/2/2001). In that study he estimated that the cost of produced with the MSBR would be about 7% less. But in "Recommendations", Moir estimated that the cost of electricity would be 10% to 20% lower from MSR than from LWR. Moir did not take the "full court press" approach to MSR cost savings, that I advocate in my "Keys" series. Thus the potential for cost savings by switching to MSR technology is even greater than Moir estimated. Thus the cost savings potential for MSR technology would be considerable, and initial development would not be extremely expensive. Moir points out that many of the developmental tasks envisioned by ORNL scientists during the 1970's have already been accomplished. He estimates that a 10 year, $100 million a year program would, be required to complete development. The 10 year time frame is based on "business as usual", and does not fully take into account the crises we face. Moir told me that a Manhattan project style development program would be justified.

In addition to the developmental program Moir envisioned, there would be the cost of building a test reactors. Moir suggested, "[t]he first reactor might be an electricity producing version of 10MWe modeled after the successful MSRE that operated at ORNL at 8MWth". It would be quite reasonable to replicated the MSRE. First it would give a design team a chance to have hands on design experience by updating the design of the original MSRE. Such an approach would be a quick and dirty route to building a working MSR that could be used for experiments, and obtaining operating experience. The MSRE II could be built with the potential to do fuel processing, but fuel processing equipment need not be a part of the initial build, and can be added later.

Moir suggests,"The next reactor might be a demonstration of a future commercial reactor
operating at a hundred or a few hundred MWe. These two steps might cost $9B ($450M/year for 20 years)". But would completion of these steps really require take 20 years? First many tasks can be performed in parallel tasks. By using the original MSRE plans, the fabrication or unmodified parts can begin while the design modification process is going on. Site construction can begin during the design phase as well. As design modifications are completed, the fabrication of modified parts can be commenced. Thus even before the completion of the modified design, reactor assembly could be underway. The second reactor could be a working developmental prototype.

There is no reason why MSR/LFTR electricity producers need be 1000 MWe+ size reactors. (I say this despite the fact that many LFTR supporters do not believe this. The advantage of the small 100 MWe to 300 MWe sized reactors is that it can be mass produced in a factory, and transported in as a single unit, or in several modules to a final set up site.

While the design of the MSRE II is still going on, the design of the LFTR developmental prototype could begin. Thus by the time the MSRE II is complete, the design of the LFTR prototype would be well underway. In parallel with the design of the LFTR prototype, the design of the manufacturing system could also be underway. The manufacturing team would not only design the factory system for building production LFTRs, but also siting and how to conduct efficient site setup. In addition, decommissioning and fission product disposal should be studied. It should be assumed that not all fission products are waste, and thus the study of FP uses would be a developmental task.
Moir's thinking on time frame is influenced by the Japanese approach of Furukawa, et al. Thus assumptions like "deployment rate" that do not violate "the norms of growth and investment rates in new industries" may not accomplish what we need. The Japanese may plan for growth over a 100 year time span, but that is not the way things are done in Texas. In Texas a the oil industry began in the late 19th century,  Oil really got going in Texas after the 1901 Spindletop gusher.  The Texas oil business peaked around 1950, and in 1956, oil geologist M. King Hubbert foresaw the coming decline of not only Texas oil, but the world wide oil business.  Texas oil production peaked in 1972 at just around 3.4 million barrels a day.  By the end of the 20th century Texas oil production had withered to less than 1/3 the 1972 peak.  World oil production, for all intent and purposes has peaked, and a similar decline is expected to soon begin.   This history would not encourage people who live in Texas to think in terms of business planning on a 100 year time frame,  or in terms of business as usual.   Texans are known for developing energy sources in a hurry, but unlike oil, a speedy development of the MSR/LFTR would not be followed by its equally speedy departure. Considering its parsimonious use of nuclear fuel, the MSR/LFTR may be around for a very long time.   

Moir assumes that by "2050 only a few hundred GWe seem possible for this new or for practically any new fission technology, which is about equal to the present world nuclear capacity". He adds, "the number of light water reactor (LWR) can grow some but quickly is limited by fuel limitations and waste management". This observation is frequently repeated by nuclear power critics.

I would argue that far more deployment is possible by 2050. First, large numbers of reactors can be mass produced in factories, and on site set up can be greatly simplified. Small reactor size mean that large grid modifications are required to accommodate a large power flow. A modular approach coupled with siting at existing coal and natural gas powered generating plants, would mean that grid tie in is possible with minimal modifications.

Nor would the availability of nuclear fuel be a problem. Thorium Energy, Inc., has recently reported that its Lemhi pass claim contains "600,000 tons of proven thorium oxide reserves. Various estimates indicate additional probable reserves of as much as 1.8 million tons or more of thorium oxide contained within these claims". In addition, "vein deposits of thorite (ThSiO 4), such as those that occur in the area of the Lemhi Pass, present the highest grade thorium, mineral, and are believed to contain approximately 25 to 63 percent thorium oxide (ThO 2) per ton of raw ore. Thus one ton of thorium ore could potentially yield as much as 500-1,200 lbs. of high grade thorium oxide (ThO 2), as compared with less than one percent of raw Uranium ore that is typically utilizable. The deployment of Lemhi Pass Thorium represents a more economically feasible source of nuclear grade ore than Uranium deposits".

Thorium cycle LFTRs requires fissionable U235 or Pu239 for reactor start up in the absence of U233, but there is plenty U235 and Pu239 available in nuclear weapons and in post weapon stockpiles. Both are also found in "spent nuclear fuel".

For once through Light Water Reactors 600,000 tons of nuclear fuel is not a lot, but LFTRs can burn Thorium at 98% efficiency. Thus 600,000 tons of Thorium can supply the United States with all of its required energy for 400 years.

Thorium is three to four times as abundant in the earths crust as uranium. And little effort has gone into exploration for thorium world wide. It is unlikely that that the Lemhi Pass Stake is the only such Thorium ore body in the world. Lower grade but recoverable thorium reserves are believed to exist in the White Mountains of Vermont, where Rice University geologists observed in the early 1960;s that local granite appeared to contain tens of millions of tons of low grade but recoverable Thorium ore.

Moir suggests using both uranium and thorium fuel cycles in MSRs. there is a strong case to be made for that. Nuclear waste, less fission products, could serve as nuclear fuel in moderated MSRs. Indeed, if nuclear waste is processed by burning and breeding in MSRs, the present supply of depleted Uranium and "spent nuclear fuel" alone could supply the United States with all of its energy for hundreds of years.

While noting the French view that unmoderated MSRs would resolve the graphite problem, Moir appears to favor graphite moderated MSRs. He believes that "power flattening" would increase "graphite life time and increases the fuel inventory". But "load following results in
reduced average power and reduced revenues but longer life until graphite damage requires shutdown for replacement [of graphite]". He adds, A base load plant can have 30 years graphite life time for a diameter of about 10m at1 GWe or 5m at 150MWe. A load following plant can have a diameter of about 5m at 230MWe. Core design can change these numbers somewhat.

Moit correctly notes, "The core size is related to factory manufacture of the vessel and transportation to the reactor site, which is a favorable factor for diameters up to about 5m. At 10m the constructionis likely an expensive field operation or more elaborate transportation to the site by barge for example".

But Moir agues against small MSRs:

"In the course of development of the MSR and during the early deployment of the first few power plants, the size of the vessel will not be a concern, but extensive deployment is expected to be highly driven by ‘‘market pull” resulting in a tendency towards larger vessels. Economic competition will be intensive with mature LWRs whose sizes today are approaching 2GWe for economy of scale reasons. This means the MSR might have to deliver large plants in order to be competitive. Of course smaller markets away from transmission grids will still have a market for small plants".

Here I would disagree with Dr. Moir. He does not look analyze a cost comparisons of in field custom construction costs for "giant economy size" nuclear plants and and small factory produced reactors. The giant economy size approach uses a manufacture technology pioneered by the Egyptians with the construction of the Pyramides. While giant the on site product may be, economical it is not. At least not compared to the economies that can be wrung from small reactors. A brief list of economies will be sufficient. The Factory production of LFTRs will:

1. Reduce labor cost by using less skilled labor more efficiently than highly skilled laborers are used in custom manufacture, and by allowing the large scale use of labor saving machines in the reactor factory.
2. Decrease manufacturing and on site set up time, the greatly reducing the time which plant owners will be paying interest without revenue being generated.
3. Allow for the use of sits which may already partially prepared, such as fossil fuel power plant sites, but which may not be appropriate for large LWRs.
4. Allow the use of reactor for industrial process heat/electrical cogeneration in situations in which a huge reactor would be hugely inappropriate for the application. LFTRs bottoming heat would be useful for desalination while the reactor is producing power.
5. For some grid uses, LWRs of any size would not be an attractive option to LFTRs. These include load following, which investors would see as an attractive option because it would prolong core life, while LWR are inferior load followers. A further grid advantage for LFTRs would be as peak load generators. A MSR that is not generating electricity, would carry a higher level of heat in its salts than it would if operating at full power. As the reactor goes online, heat would be drawn from the salt, and the chainreaction in the reactor core would increase, replacing the lost heat in the salt. Thus the LFTR would function well as a peak reserve power source.

Dr Moir concludes:

"The MSR has so many favorable features, many discussed here that one is at a loss to explain why the reactor has not already been developed. Once a program has been killed there is a stigma attached that creates a legacy of its own. Several decades ago reactor accidents, low number
of orders for new reactors, low uranium prices and low-cost natural gas have discouraged reactor development such as the MSR but all these things have reversed. I strongly recommend independent thinkers to re-look at and invest in the MSR. China and India could take on this task to their great advantage. Even a philanthropist or venture capitalist
could breathe new life into this concept–as mall 10MWe (or even much smaller) test reactor would provide relevant information useful to proceeding on to a commercial power reactor and represents a low risk, low cost first step".

I am in complete agreement with Dr. Moir's conclusion.

Ralph Moir on MSR/LFTR Development

Ralph Moir prepared this "partial list of research topics that could have a substantial improvement in the prospects for a commercially viable (MSR) product".

1. Thermostat negative temperature control. The point of this topic is to end up with a strong negative temperature coefficient even at high temperatures and with low fission product burden.
neutron poison rods are actuated by temperature response need to develop a design that is compatible chemically and good for neutron economy and for waste management

2. All carbon composite primary system. The point of this research idea is to be able to operate at high enough temperature (~900°C) for a direct cycle gas turbine or (~1050°C) to make hydrogen by thermo chemical water splitting cycle. We are speaking of vessel, piping, pumps and heat exchangers.
a, allows higher temperature
b. avoid corrosion of metal alloys
c. better tritium control with SiC layer
d. can SiC be used to improve the neutron damage characteristics of graphite? The problem is thermal stresses and de-bonding due to differential thermal expansion

3. Alternative salt formulations. The point of this research is to avoid the problems listed below with Li and Be.
a. Li results in tritium production and lithium-7 is expensive
b. Be is expensive and hazardous to work with due to inhalation toxicity. Look at NaF, ZrF4, look at solubility enhancement, corrosion, neutron loss.

4. Safeguard and non proliferation analyses in use of Th-U-233 cycle. The point of this topic is to understand proliferation issues.
a. make most or all of fuel once started up (CR~1)
b. maybe start up on reactor minor actinides (Pu and higher); get credit for taking on this material rather than paying for enriched U
c. enhance U-232 production to promote non-proliferation by making diversion of U-233 harder, less desirable and easier to detect. See item 9 below.

5. Centrifuge for noble and semi-noble metal separations. The point of this work is to improve the outlook for extraction and handling of the precipitating fission products to enhance waste management strategies.
a. base on continuous flow contactor
b. incorporate into (fuel salt) pump

6. Waste form and assay study. This topic emphasizes waste management, a vital aspect of nuclear energy.
a. estimate assay (carry over of actinides) with each class of waste, e.g., gaseous, noble and semi-b. noble metals and valence two and three products with reductive extraction. Consider Bi carry over and resulting Po-210.
c. waste form: fluoride for interim and substitute fluorapatite for permanent storage

7. Plant description, size, undergrounding, cost, systems. Economic considerations are important motivators to develop this new nuclear power system.
a. change out time for graphite vs. core size
b. salt formulation
c. underground design considerations
d. cost analysis preliminaries
e. power conversion cycle

8. System assessment along lines of NERI-2002 proposal. What is known about the molten salt reactor is decades old. Bringing up to date the database is vital to resurrecting the molten salt reactor development.

9. U232 proliferation for thorium

A note about Ralph Moir's list
Ralph Moir's list is closely related to Forsberg's analysis of MSR developmental issues. In addition Moir pushes three important developmental issues related to the integration of MSR/LFTR technology into the energy production system, the control of the cost of implementing wide scale deployment of MSR/LFTR technology, and to the prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation. We might refer to these as grand scale development issues.

If MSR/LFTR technology is to receive wide spread deployment - and I would argue that this would be our best hope for meeting the twin challenges of peak oil, and CO2 driven global warming - then economic, social, and political issues must be also addressed, as part of developmental research. I have argued in previous posts, that a "full court press" approach to cost lowering in the design, production and deployment of LFTRs could yield significant cost savings. In addition, the introduction of mass production techniques for LFTRs would lead to the ability to quickly build and deploy a very large numbers of reactors in a relatively short period of time. MSR developmental research should include research on cost lowering, mass production, site selection, and power distribution.

I personally regard the word proliferation as a shibboleth. When the words "nuclear proliferation" are uttered, morally proper people are expected to recoil in horror, and stop thinking. Actually virtual blueprints of low cost nuclear proliferation technology already exist in the public domain. Even the technologically backward, failed state of North Korea has mastered it. MSR technology would be far less attractive as a proliferation tool, than a World War II era, easily acquired, and relatively low cost technology, the Graphite Reactor. Unfortunately the value of such knowledge will be undoubtedly lost on politicians, who seldom use their intelligence, and usually lack the slightest capacity for courage. Therefore the existing proliferation resistant features of the LFTR should be assessed, and if necessary enhanced, as a part of LFTR development.

Interview with Ralph Moir: Part I

Introduction: I wrote Dr, Ralph Moir last week, seeking an email interview. Dr. Moit was an extremely distinguished scientist at Lawerence-Livermore Laboratory, and a personal associate of Dr. Edward Teller. Dr. Moir was extremely gracious in answering all of my questions. I jave split the three pasts of the interview into three separate posts. The first questions address Dr. Moir's work with fission/fusion hybred reactors.

On Mar 13, 2008, at 9:49 AM, Charles Barton wrote:

Dear Dr. Moir, There are numerous questions I would like to ask you. This would be of course contingent on your willingness to spend the time required to respond to my questions. I take the view that scientist are people who work on important questions, and their views should be known to a broader public. I have posted a number of my father's public papers along with an account of his career at ORNL on my blog, Nuclear Green. I have also given a considerable focus to the writings and career of Alvin Weinberg. Since you are a senior scientist, your knowledge and experience should be of considerable public interest. If you so choose, I would very much appreciate if you answer some or all of these questions.

During much of your own working career, you worked on the fusion/fission hybrid concept. I have a number of questions in connection with that:

1. Do you still think that concept is viable?
Yes

2. What would see as its strengths and weaknesses?
Fusion holds the promise yet to be full filled of providing a supply of neutrons that can be used to produce fissile fuel for fission reactors. Even if fusion cost twice that of fission per unit of thermal power produced, its fuel would be competitive with mined uranium at $200/kg. Fusion will be even more competitive as its cost come down. This produced fuel can be used in fission reactors to completely burn up the fertile fuel supply, that is depleted uranium or thorium. Its weakness is fusion is not here and past slow progress suggests future progress might be slow. Furthermore, we are not assured that fusion's costs will be less than twice that of fission.

That fusion can produce or breed fissile fuel is an advantage and simultaneously any facilities must be guarded against their misuse towards making fissile material for unauthorized explosives.

3. What technical advantages, if any would you see for a fusion/fission hybrid over a conventional molten salt reactor?

A conventional molten salt reactor can produce almost all of its own fuel but needs initial fuel for start up and needs some make up fuel and also some fuel to be used to burnout certain wastes. So the fusion/fission hybrid can be this fuel supplier. In this way the combination of a hybrid fuel supplier and molten salt burners can supply the planets power for many hundreds or even thousands of years at an increased nuclear power level enough to make a big impact in decreasing carbon usage. Such a combination might have one hybrid fusion fission reactor for every fifteen fission reactors.

If a hybrid reactor produces both fuel and power by fissioning this fuel insitu, I am afraid the system will be uneconomical relative to the combination of a fuel producer and separate burner fission reactors and relative to other fission reactors.

4. In what timeframe might we expect to see an technically and economically viable product?

So far fusion concepts that are approaching the feasibility stage suffer from being very expensive. Tokamak magnetic fusion and laser fusion facilities are very expensive making "productizing" uneconomical based on our present state of the art. The next tokamak called ITER might be built and tested in 15 years and with advances the projected costs in a follow-on might be low enough that a product or viable product can come out after another 15 years or 30 years from now.

The laser fusion facilities are also too expensive but with advances in the next five years a follow on set of facilities might be an economical product in another 15 years or 20 years from now. A key to progress in fusion is getting better performance in smaller lower cost facilities.

Ralph Moir Interview: Part II

Ralph Moir's Post-retirement Interest in the Molten Salt Reactor

After your retirement you seem to have shifted your focus from fusion/fission hybrids toward more conventional molten salt reactors. In addition to the paper you wrote with Edward Teller, you appear to have some involvement with the Fuji Molten Salt Reactor Project.
1. Can you tell us why you shifted your interest from fission/fusion hybrids to more conventional Molten Salt Reactors?

My job at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory involved studying and designing fusion/fission hybrid reactors. I lead the effort of many terrific researchers including those at other labs: ORNL, ANL, INL, PPPL and industries: Westinghouse, GE, GA, Bectel. During this time I became increasingly more familiar with all the fission reactor concepts. My favorite technology for fuel production was the use of molten salt pumped through the blanket surrounding the fusion reactor.

My favorite fission reactor was the molten salt reactor whose program was terminated in the 1970s. While others were forgetting about the molten salt reactor I became more interested but this was not a part of my job. After retiring from full time work in 2000 I increased my effort on the molten salt reactor.

2. Why do you think that the Molten Salt Reactor is important?

It holds the promise of being more economical than our present reactors while using less fuel. I published a paper on this topical that the ORNL people did not feel they could publish. It can come in small sizes without as much of a penalty as is usually the case and can be in large sizes. It can burn thorium thereby getting away from so much buildup of plutonium and higher actinides.

3. What is your relationship to the Fuji Molten Salt Reactor project?

I became familiar with this effort and its leader Professor Furukawa in about 1980 and appreciate his carrying on the ORNL work after they stopped. He has been a friend and colleague ever since.

4. What project is that project making?

The next step in molten salt reactor development should be the construction and operation of a small <10 MWe reactor based largely on the MSRE that operated at ORNL at about & MWth but without electricity production. The FUJI project has not gotten funding and is making no progress other than a paper here and there on some particular aspect.

5. Do you believe that a crash development of the Molten Salt Reactor concept is warranted?

Yes, that is in fact the conclusion of the paper Teller and I wrote. Surprisingly the cost of a crash program is not so great, less than $1B but its progress could be rapid owing to the feasibility proven by the work at ORNL so long ago on MSRE.

6. What is your opinion of the use of carbon-carbon composites in Molten Salt Reactors?

I am impressed by the ideas for use of carbon-carbon composites for high temperature heat exchangers and maybe piping and vessels. If metals are not used in the primary system then the temperature could jump from the 700°C of MSRE to 1000 °C by use of carbon-carbon composites. This development could be rapid by building on the work taking place in industry today.

7. What is any techniques would you suggest to counteract the effects of neutron radiation of graphite and carbon-carbon composites?

I am not very knowledgeable on graphite technology and can only assume small incremental improvements in its radiation damage abilities can be expected. However, I am intrigued by the dedicated effort of a number of individuals who are studying ways of eliminating the use of graphite as a moderator in the molten salt reactor. Perhaps carbon-carbon composites might be used as replaceable shields to protect walls from the direct neutron damage or be used to separate two fluids, an old concept at ORNL that was dropped over three decades ago but composites might resurrect it.

Interview with Ralph Moir: Part III,

Questions on Edward Teller

1. Edward Teller remained a controversial figure at the time of his death. Since you worked with Teller, what do you think the public should know, in order to better understand him?

He was brilliant, multi-dimentional and focussed. He promoted action via the political process that gave him fame and infamy but most importantly gave results. His writing and that written about him tells the story. It is most inspiring and I recommend its reading to anyone interested.

2. My own understanding of Teller was that he was a complex person. Can you give us some insights?

Yes he was complex but getting to know him told you he was in depth on many axis. He focussed on one topic at a time. Sequentially he could switch to another topic but preferred to stay on the topic at hand and work it hard. He treated science as having fun. It was a joy to him to discuss ideas.

3. Teller appears to have had a long time interest in the molten salt reactor. How important did Teller think the development of the Molten Salt Reactor was?

Teller had a long term interest in seeing fission reactors built for man kind's benefit. His interest was to encourage that end rather than work directly in pursuit of reactor development. He strongly favored thorium and thermal reactors and undergrounding them. He periodically over the past 25 years of his life would call on me to review the characteristics of various reactor types. I always treated all of them but ended by saying I preferred the molten salt reactor. He finally agreed with me and we wrote the paper together. In other words he was not a strong advocate of the molten salt reactor over a lot of years. He thought the program must have been terminated for good reasons. After examining the reasons for terminating the program he came up with the phrase, "it was an excusable mistake." He believed building a small molten salt reactor to get the development going and get deployment going was most urgent because our energy options are running out (especially natural gas).

4. Did Teller have any time frame in which he anticipated to molten salt reactor development?

At a spending level of $100 M per year for R&D and $100 M per year for construction, such a program could have a ~10 MWe unit operating in a decade and be well on the way towards a large scale power plan.

5. Teller was interested in setting up reactors underground. Why did he prefer underground placement, rather than using conventional containment structures?

He used the word "obvious" safety. Bomb tests conducted underground contained the radioactive products very well. It was this fact and the fact that waste are to be stored underground both suggest building the reactors themselves underground. I repeatedly brought up the point that under grounding increases the cost and if the cost increase is too much, perhaps over 20% the reactor will most likely not be built. He accepted the idea that 10 m underground was a good compromise between the safety benefits of undergrounding while keeping the cost add on small enough to not preclude the deployment.

My web site (www.geocities.com/rmoir2003) gives links to downloading my paper with Teller on the Thorium fueled underground power plant based on molten salt technology. Also there are papers on cost of electricity compared to other reactors and recommendations for a aresatart of molten salt reactor development.

Edward Teller, Global Warming, and Molten Salt Reactors

Edward Teller listens as Eugene Wigner explain a theoretical physics problem in Hungarian

Truth can come from people we don't like.  Edward Teller achieved a form of immortality in Peter Sellers satiric portrail of a Teller like figure in the movie Dr. Stranglove.  Teller who was in reality a flawed, complex, and compelling figure, was no Dr. Strangelove, bent on a nuclear war. Teller worried about nuclear winter, and even his most questionable idea, the Star Wars scheme he sold to Ronald Reagan, was intended to prevent the disasterous effects of nuclear war.   Teller shared with Alvin Weinberg concerns about nuclear safety, the problems of carbon-dioxide and global warming, and future sources of energy.

In December 1957 Edward Teller was invited to address the Annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. Teller was at the height of his fame. He was an honest to God celebrity, with reporters at his side, jotting down his comments, photographers snapping his picture, and as disgusting as it might seem now, women volunteering to sleep with him on the basis of his fame. (I know this because a beautify but wayward woman once describe an encounter with Teller to me.  She would have slept with Teller had he consented to the arrangement.)  He was referred to in the press as the Father of the "H-Bomb." He was also a darling of the American right-wing. No doubt the ACS thought by getting Teller to speak, they had achieved some coup. They must have been a little bit bewildered then when Teller started to talk about carbon dioxide and global climate. Teller told the assembled chemists that continued burning of carbon based fuels would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, eventually warming the planet to the extent that the polar ice caps would melt, and the resulting rise in sea level would submerge costal cities under water.

When Teller talked about destroying the Russians with H-Bombs, the press, Congress, presidents listened, and beautiful women contemplated sleeping with him. But Teller's warnings about CO2 and global warming received little attention that day. Teller, for all his fame was a pariah within the nuclear research community.

In Oak Ridge, where I grew up, Teller was intensely disliked by the scientific community. The problem stemmed from a 28 April 1954, hearing by an AEC board, in which Teller was asked to testify about J. Robert Oppenheimer's Security Clearance. Oppenheimer had opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and Teller had suggested to the AEC before the hearing that the charges against Oppenheimer to include his opposition to the the development of the hydrogen bomb. For Teller that was even more personal. Oppenheimer had chosen Hans Bethe, rather than Teller, to head the theoretical division at Los Alomos during World War 2. After that, the enraged Teller refused to cooperate with work on the atomic bomb, so Oppenheimer assigned to the research task of figuring out the more distant H-Bomb. 

During the AEC security hearing, Teller questioned Oppenheimer's "wisdom and judgment, . ." No doubt his doubt about Oppenheimer "wisdom and judgment" was based on Oppenheimer's choice of Bethe rather than Teller. Teller was also enraged by Oppenheimer's opposition to the H Bomb. Thus when asked about his view on the security risk posed by Oppenheimer, Teller responded that he had often seen Teller act "in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand ... To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more." Teller added that it "would be wiser not to grant clearance."

In a crowning act of infamy, as he left the room, Teller offered his hand to Oppenheimer and muttered the words, "I'm sorry." Teller was in the view of many Oak Ridge scientist, nothing short of a Judas Iscariot. No one was going to pay attention to what Teller had to say in 1957, but by 1971, Teller's 1957 ACS speech had been forgotten, and the story about global warming brought about by CO2 emissions was spreading through ORNL until it came to Weinberg's attention.

Teller's reputation was at its height somewhat exaggerated. There is no doubt that he was wrong more often than he was right. During the development of the H-Bomb Teller barked up every wrong tree on the block. The successful concept did not come from Teller, it came from Stanislaw Ulam, a Polish mathematician. Teller worked out the details and took the credit. As late as 1999, Teller told Scientific American:

"I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, 'I don't believe in it.'

Teller was a scientist who solved problems by dint of persistence. No one should doubt Teller's brilliance, but he usually made several bad guesses before he came up with a good solution to the problem he was working on. Ronald Reagan bought into Teller's Star Wars concept, even though it was somewhat less than half baked. The Technology for the Star Wars concepts was years away from maturity, the research was extremely expensive and much was likely to lead to no good end, implementation, would have been exceedingly expensive, and the cold war was to end far before the project had any hope of achieving success. It is a singular evidence of what a bad idea Star Wars was, that George W, Bush trued to revive the idea during his second administration. Never the less on that day in December 1957 when he spoke to the ACS about CO2 and global warming, Edward Teller, was undoubtedly right.   It was almost fifteen years before Teller's message got to Oak Ridge. 

Teller also had early and significant concerns about reactor safety.  He participated in the development of American reactor safety standards while chairing the AEC Reactor Safeguard Committee in the late 1940s. His interest in the development of a safe, meltdown proof reactor lead to the creation of General Atomics in the 1950's.

Teller was a scientific radical in that he tried to solve every problem by seeking its root.    Livermore physicist Neal Snyderman commented, “Edward sought to understand everything from a fundamental level.” Teller had an early interest in the molten salt reactor, before he left Los Alomos he encouraged its development there. No doubt the radical Teller understood the elegant simplicity of the molten salt concept, and appreciated its significant safety features.

When he died, Edward Teller was working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist Ralph Moir, on one last paper titled "Thorium-Fueled Underground Power Plant Based on Molten Salt Technology." Teller died before the paper was completed but it was his last project, and Moir brought it faithfully to conclusion after Teller's death.

The abstract to the Teller Moir paper stated:

"This paper addresses the problems posed by running out of oil and gas supplies and the environmental problems that are due to greenhouse gases by suggesting the use of the energy available in the resource thorium, which is much more plentiful than the conventional nuclear fuel uranium. We propose the burning of this thorium dissolved as afluoride in molten salt in the minimum viscosity mixture ofLiF and BeF[2] together with a small amount of [235]U or plutonium fluoride to initiate the process to be located at least 10 m underground. The fission products could be stored at the same underground location. With graphite replacement or new cores and with the liquid fuel transferred to the new cores periodically, the power plant could operate for up to 200 yr with no transport of fissile material to the reactor or of wastes from the reactor during this period. Advantages that include utilization of,an abundant fuel, inaccessibility of that fuel to terrorists or for diversion to weapons use, together with good economics and safety features such as an underground location will diminish public concerns. We call for the construction of a small prototype thorium-burning reactor."