The D A Ryan MSR/LFTR critique: Not ready for Prime Time, Part II

Several weeks ago, I posted a a critical review of DA Ryan's discussion of Molten Salt Reactor technology. Ryan is a British engineer, but his assessment did not appear to be at all well informed. Ryan began with questionable assumptions, failed to note well regarded information sources that simply disagreed with his controversial views, then proceeded to reason from unsupported assumptions to dogmatic conclusions about nuclear energy.

I generally judge how well a writer is doing by picking out an issue I am familiar with and looking at how well he treats that issue. In my review of Ryan, I looked at his assertion that there was graphite fires risk in Molten Salt Reactors. Ryan saw the fire risk ans a major hazard and claimed, “graphite is basically just high grade coal.” This is nonsense. Not only is graphite not vert flamible, but graphite powder based fire extinguishers are used to fight fires in metals like lithium. In addition, Post-Chernobyl studies attempting to assess graphite fire dangers as nuclear safety issues, have concluded that fires in graphite moderated reactors were much less likely than previously believed. Ryan insists that the fire in the Windscape unit 1 reactor, was a graphite fire. However recent remote visual inspections of the Windscale reactor demonstrate that very little fire related damage to its graphite structures occurred. This is wholly inconsistent with Ryan's contention, but in the face of this strong evidence, he refuses to acknowledge the weakness of the Windscale graphite fire contention, or the unlikelihood of a graphite fire in a Molten Salt Reactor. This behavior might be referred to as dogmatically clinging to a mistaken assumption after the assumption has been demonstrated to be false.

Bill Hannahan also posted several critical comments on Ryan's MSR critique. Bill has graciously offered to pass on his comments on Nuclear Green, and although delayed by my recent surgery, here they are.

The D A Ryan MSR/LFTR critique: Not ready for Prime Time, Part II
By Bill Hannahan

Charles Barton published an essay about a nuclear energy review that contained a chapter highly critical of Molten Salt Reactor technology. I began submitting review comments on each section of that chapter. After several comments were posted my comments were blocked. Charles has graciously offered to publish all the comments.

REVIEW COMMENTS ON 8.2 The MSRE experiment

“Notably, it never generated a single watt of electricity. As I’ve mentioned previously the turbo generator systems for high temperature reactors is technically challenging, especially for the LFTR as the molten salt presents a number of design challenges….

That said, the goal of the MSR experiment was to prove the reactor concept, not develop turbo machinery kit, which would have been a serious (and costly) distraction.”

The Author effectively counters his own point. When GE builds a new jet engine they do not build a new plane to test it on. They test it on a stand. Then they test it on an OLD plane with other well proven engines. After the new design has met its performance requirements it is mated with the new airframe for which it was designed. We know how to convert high temperature heat into electric power.

Checking the author’s link to part 3 to review the technical challenges for LFTR we find this;

“Several of these proposed reactors have operating temperatures in excess of +800 °C. Some, such as the LFTR would need critical parts to go even higher as much as +1,600 °C…

So before we even begin our evaluation, we have to conclude that a big stumbling block to several of the proposed reactor designs is this issue of materials choice.”

One of the great advantages of the MSR is the ability to go to high temperature without pressurization, thereby allowing higher thermal efficiency and reducing component size. The author is trying to make a silk purse look like a sow’s ear.

The most important quality in an engineer is the ability to compromise wisely. Engineers are trying to create the optimum balance over many issues, construction cost, life expectancy, efficiency, safety, maintainability, operating and maintenance cost etc. The engineer who focuses on one parameter at the expense of all others will design a failure.

The author makes it sound as if these issues only apply to the MSR, but all engineering is like that, the Chevy volt, Apple I pad, Boeing 787 etc. are all compromises.

Imagine doing the engineering for a solar thermal plant with molten salt storage. Some collectors may be a mile away from the storage facility. They go from blazing hot temperatures at high noon to freezing temperatures on some nights. The salt temperature is constantly changing throughout the cycle, flow rates are constantly being adjusted as temperatures change, to maintain the desired output. Heat exchangers, piping and storage vessels have to be extra large to envelope worst case conditions.

The constant steady flow of clean high temperature intermediate loop salt into the steam generator of an MSR makes the design of those components a breeze by comparison.

It is likely that the parametric studies will show that the first generation MSR’s should be simple uranium burning reactors made of familiar materials, operating at the low end of the MSR potential temperature range.

We must pay for the R&D to do the studies and build a few plants to get the engineering data. That is how we make progress. That is how we develop systems that can make energy cheaper than fossil fuel and end the age of fossil fuel.

“Stories of said pipe work glowing red (see below) are worrying, as it indicates they were operating well within the thermal creep zone... Consequently, its unlikely one could utilise the same design spec today for a commercial plant.”

Yes, the design engineers will have to do some engineering to ensure that all materials are operating well within their nominal performance envelope. Nothing unusual about that.

“Also, the MSRE never included the more tricky Chemical Processing Plant. One was designed by ORNL but never installed.”

Right. This is why I think the first generation MSR will be the simple uranium burner that does not need on line processing. We do not need breeders immediately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So

http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/TEAC3%20presentations/TEAC3_LeBlanc_David.pdf

The general tone seems to be that the MSR is not mature fully developed technology; therefore we should not pursue it. If humans had taken that view throughout history we would still be living in caves.

Review of 8.3 Thorium Cycle questions and problems

“we’ll still need supplies of Uranium to get Thorium reactors going again whenever we have to turn it off (which will happen at least once a year or so during its annual maintenance shutdown)…

Obviously, once we exhaust the world’s U-235 stockpiles, LFTR’s and any other Thorium fuelled reactors will cease to function.”

For the LFTR you would only need uranium 235 to startup and breed the uranium 233 sufficient to continue operation. No additional uranium is needed for each shutsown/startup cycle.

There are 3.5 billion tons of uranium in seawater. Perhaps half of that is available at less than 5 times today’s price. That’s still cheap for conventional reactors that require 58 pounds of uranium to generate an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity for one American. It is very cheap for uranium MSR's that requires only 12 pounds of uranium to generate a lifetime supply of electricity for one American, and it is an insignificant cost in a breeder reactor that uses 6 ounces of uranium and/or thorium per lifetime supply of electricity.

“Thorium-232 is a problem with its half life of 14 Billion years (and while the T-232 isn’t a major worry its only mildly radioactive, all the time during this 14 Billion years it will be decaying and producing stuff that is!).”

Thorium-232 (natural thorium) is now scattered throughout the earths crust, including under your house and mine. So removing it, and converting it to fission products that loose the vast majority of their activity in a few hundred years, while extracting enormous quantities of emission free energy, and placing those fission products in a carefully selected location deep under ground or under the seabed, is a good idea.

Nuclear power means earth will be LESS radioactive for most of its remaining years than it would have been without humans.


Comments on 8.4 The Chemical Seperation Plant and waste output

“One other misconception on the internet is the view that a LFTR reactor will produce almost no nuclear waste”

It depends on your definition of almost. To generate an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity for one person in the U.S. with coal we burn 1,140,000 pounds of coal, producing 2,440,000 pounds of CO2 and thousands of pounds of toxic waste, much of it released into the atmosphere.

To generate a lifetime supply of electricity with today’s reactors we mine about 58 pounds of uranium of which about 10 pounds gets into the reactor and produces 6 ounces of fission products. With breeder reactors we mine 6 ounces of uranium or thorium to do the same thing.

The complete natural decay of one uranium atom to one stable atom of lead produces about 7 times more radiation than the complete decay of the fission products from one uranium atom. Uranium and thorium are nature’s radioactive waste, distributed throughout the earths crust without special containment vessels. Nature’s radioactive waste is not buried in carefully selected sites deep underground, it can often be found in soil on the surface.

The extraction of uranium from sea water has been demonstrated at an estimated cost of $160/kg.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/11/two-proposals-for-mining-ocean-for-720.html

Coal, our cheapest fossil fuel, costs 3.2 cents / kWh.

http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html

We generate about 1,500 watts per person in the U.S., so an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity is about 1,000,000 kWh's. Lifetime fuel cost with coal is $34,000, $424/year.

A LFTR will consume 6 ounces of fuel to make this much electricity. To be conservative lets assume that the uranium required to start the reactor is 10% of the lifetime reactor fuel consumption (it’s probably more like 1%, even less considering that at end of life the uranium 233 can be transferred into a new reactor).

Some fission products have positive value.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE

By destroying 6 ounces of uranium we make earth LESS radioactive for most of its remaining years than it would have been without humans, we prevent the formation of six ounces of lead that would be toxic forever, we produce some valuable material, we produce a lifetime supply of electricity, and we prevent the harmful effects of generating that energy by some other means.

In my opinion any technology that destroys more waste than it produces meets this requirement; “will produce almost no nuclear waste”

“I’ve seen various dusty line drawings of the 1970’s ORNL proposal, you can see them yourself here and here, but that’s it. I would firstly note that materials science and chemical processing technology has moved on hugely in the last 40 years, so I doubt it would be sensible to build an CPP as shown in these plans. A new one would have to be redesigned from scratch.”

I agree with everything except “from scratch.” It makes no sense to ignore the knowledge and experience gained in the past. We should build on that.

“Either way building our entire energy strategy on a as of yet unproven concept would be dangerous. The same equally goes for Thorium.”

I agree, it is foolish to spend billions building huge numbers of windmills and solar farms that cannot produce reliable dispatchable kWh's. That is why I recommend an all out R&D program to develop all possible replacements for fossil fuel.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7275#comment-755200

Comments on 8.5 Graphite core and Fire Risk

“Graphite is basically ultra high grade coal!” …

The Windscale reactor is basically a stovepipe charcoal starter with forced air ventilation, scaled up to the size of a power plant. If the designers had actually used coal as a moderator it would have fired up like a blast furnace. It would have destroyed the vent filters, vaporized much of the fuel and likely collapsed the building.

“Inspections have shown that there was NOT a graphite fire: damage to graphite, caused by severely overheated fuel assemblies, was localised.”

http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/iacs/nusac/131005/p18.pdf

Graphite clearly does not burn like coal. The claim that, “Graphite is basically ultra high grade coal!”, is either based on lack of knowledge or it is deliberate disinformation.

The author acknowledges that in a MSR the graphite will normally be submerged in molten salt, not air. The dump tank will be filled with an inert gas. When the core is dumped, a vent line from the top of the dump tank to the top of the reactor vessel will transfer the inert gas into the reactor vessel. The reactor room will likely be inerted as well.

For air to get to the graphite the salt must be dumped and at least two barriers must be breached, and there will be no fans to generate a high flow rate.

If the graphite did somehow burn, recall that the vast majority of fission products would be safely tucked away down below in the dump tanks, or previously removed to safe storage. Only a thin patina of fission products on the graphite would be subject to fire, not enough to support a big release.

The claim that a graphite fire in a MSR could result in a large release of fission products is a groundless fabrication with no supporting evidence and no potential mechanism.

A 50 year follow up of Windscale workers showed;

“Despite the higher doses received by the fire cohort workers the SMRs by decade for all malignant cancer are consistently lower than those of the non-fire cohort workers.”

http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/30/3/001/pdf/0952-4746_30_3_001.pdf

Comments on 8.6 Why air cooling a LFTR would be a very bad idea

“Another misconception is that LFTR’s can be air-cooled (here and here) rather than being dependant on the water cooling process we utilise in most other power stations.”

Actually the high temperature of MSR’s makes them ideally suited for dry cooling in arid climates.

“Firstly, fire safety, air is an oxidising substance. Fires start all the time at power stations (fossil fuel fired and nuclear ones), especially in the turbine halls and the last thing we want in an emergency is a load of big cooling fans blasting in air and literally fanning the flames!”

I think the author has since acknowledged that the fans would be cooling the condensers located outside the turbine hall, not in the turbine hall or containment building. The turbine hall is separate from the reactor containment and its safety related equipment.

“In this scenario we’d face the dilemma between stopping the fans and cutting of the source of cooling”

The steam plant and its condenser are not safety related systems, the reactor does not rely on the steam plant for safe cooling. Decay heat will be removed by natural convection of air or water. There are no flammable materials in or around the dump tanks.

“The Uranium we’re mining was safe underground and seperate from the biosphere.”

According to the EPA, thousands die from radon exposure every year in the U.S. alone. Nuclear power is far safer than natural uranium left in the ground.

““basically high grade coal” was a quip”

Publishing a quip that you know is misleading and prejudicial is unethical.

The danger of a positive void coefficient of reactivity was well known before the Chernobyl reactors were built. The design could never have been approved for construction in the west, nor could any power reactor design without a containment building, as Chernobyl was. Operators bypassed the protection systems and violated the operating limits to perform a dangerous experiment and spiked the power to 100 times design limits resulting in a steam explosion that blew the reactor apart.

The risk of hydrogen production from the zirconium water reaction was well known, as are the mitigating mechanisms; ventilation to keep concentration below the flammability limit or ignition to burn the hydrogen as it is produced to avoid an explosion. Unfortunately the Japanese failed to deal adequately with the hydrogen production.

The only nuclear accidents to release large quantities of fission products are those where a direct path to the atmosphere is provided by design or by explosion. Even then it is interesting that out of hundreds of fission products, only a few of the most volatile constitute most of the risk.

MSR's have continuous online refueling. There is only enough reactivity for normal operation. I do not know of any way to make an MSR explode. Do you?

Cesium is by far the most problematic fission product in an accident. It melts at 28C, the boiling point is 671 C. When a cesium atom is produced in a MSR it immediately hooks up with a fluorine atom to make cesium fluoride, melting point 682C, boiling point 1251 C, so it has much lower volatility resulting in greatly reduced emissions under accident conditions. Jet fuel boils at about 200 C, and the temperature of burning jet fuel is 260-315C in open air, 980 C in an ideal burner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

You could cool a MSR by spraying it with burning jet fuel.

““the fuel will be safely tucked away in dumb tanks” IF the fuel dump process goes okay! This is the danger here, you’re relying on the successful functioning of your fuel dump process”

If the fuel is not dumped the graphite is submerged in salt, no oxygen contact, no fire. You might say, ‘what if it is half submerged?’ In that case the fission products are mostly below the liquid line. If the graphite above the liquid line burns, very little fission product will be volatilized, and it will plate out as soon as it contacts a cooler surface.

This is a fundamental difference between solid and liquid fueled reactors. Volatile fission products will be removed continuously and non volatile products will largely stay on site during an accident. The author cannot have it both ways; he provides no evidence or mechanism to support the idea that a graphite fire in a MSR can happen, and even if it does burn, no mechanism that would result in a large release of radioactivity. The graphite fire hazard claim with MSR's is a groundless fabrication.

“Defence in depth would require that other measures be taken also, although this could be as simple as just putting it all in a reinforced concrete building designed to withstand a high temperature fire.”

I have no doubt that all future power reactors, including MSR's, will have a robust containment. But the MSR containment can be much smaller, using far less material, because hi temperature heat exchangers are very small and steam generators can be small and located outside containment. A pipe rupture inside containment will not release a huge volume of gas or steam, so no need for a large expensive high pressure containment vessel.

“you still need some water on site”

There will be water on site, but you do not need it to keep MSR fuel safe. Engines and motors are air cooled. Light bulbs with white hot filaments are air cooled. In fact, the hotter an object runs, the easier it is to air cool, another big advantage of MSR's.

“So all in all I’d argue uranium mining causes as many (if not more) problems than it solves.”

If we replaced all coal plants with nuclear plants, eliminating mountain top removal, huge releases of mercury, cadmium, soot, CO2 etc that would save perhaps 1,000,000 lives per year and prevent millions more non fatal adverse health effects. How will uranium mining match those effects, especially with advanced designs that reduce mining to 6 ounces per lifetime?

FOLLOWUP on sea water uranium comment by bluerock.

“Extracting uranium from the sea is not a practical possibility.”

If Bardi is right why can’t he answer questions? Why can’t he find the error in contrary analysis? What is your answer to these questions?

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-412498
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-412127
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-414051
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-415226

“Maybe, like me, he can’t be bothered to read, research and respond to every challenge that appears on the interwebs.”

It is interesting that he found time to address the easy and favorable comments but not the hard questions based on facts and logic.

“Here’s one way to shut us all up: prove that it is technically and *economically* viable to extract uranium from seawater at quantities that could supply a global nuclear industry.”

Had you carefully reviewed your own reference you would know that I addressed that point.
“Why are there no sea water uranium extraction plants?
Historically the price has been under $60 / pound with a few big spikes.
Would you bet your life savings on uranium staying above $200 / lb? I don’t think so, and neither do professional investors, however if sea water technology keeps improving the cost may drop enough to make it happen sooner than most people think.
Sea water uranium is very important because it puts a cap of $200/pound on the maximum sustainable cost of uranium for thousands of years.
Sea water uranium does not have to supply all of our uranium in order to cap the uranium price at $200/pound. It only has to replace the percentage of land based uranium sources that cost more than $200/pound, and that percentage is zero for the foreseeable future.”

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193

Comments on 8.7 Why power cycling a LFTR would be an even worse idea!

“The truth is that the LFTR is as constrained in it power output capabilities as other reactors, possibly more constrained in fact.”

It is interesting that you know the performance specifications of power plants that have not even been designed yet.

“Power cycling a LFTR would necessitate such cycles, worsening our already narrow materials choice and requiring a much more heavily constructed reactor.”

So you have already designed the plant, chosen the materials, selected the salt formula, determined the operating temperature. Sounds like you designed a poor reactor.

“It is also worth noting that existing nuclear stations are capable of some level of power cycling anyway just not much!”

The most popular gen. III reactor is the AP-1000. Its design includes the lessons learned from decades of experience running gen. II reactors. Look at its capability.

“The AP1000 is designed to withstand the following operational occurrences without the generation of a reactor trip or actuation of the safety related passive engineered safety systems. The logic and setpoints for the AP1000 Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) control systems are developed in order to meet the following operational transients without reaching any of the protection system setpoints.

· ± 5%/minute ramp load change within 15% and 100% power
· ± 10% step load change within 15% and 100% power
· 100% generator load rejection
· 100-50-100% power level daily load follow over 90% of the fuel cycle life
· Grid frequency changes equivalent to 10% peak-to-peak power changes at 2%/minute rate
· 20% power step increase or decrease within 10 minutes
· Loss of a single feedwater pump

Off-site power has no safety-related function due to the passive safety features incorporated in the AP1000 design. Therefore, redundant off-site power supplies are not required

Containing Core Damage. The AP1000 design provides the operators with the ability to drain the IRWST water into the reactor cavity in the event that the core has uncovered and is melting. This prevents reactor vessel failure and subsequent relocation of molten core debris into the containment. Retention of the debris in the vessel significantly reduces the uncertainty in the assessment of containment failure and radioactive release to the environment due to ex-vessel severe accident phenomena.”

http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf

“The turbine generator is intended not only for base load operation, but also for load follow capability. Mechanical design of the turbine root and rotor steeple attachments uses optimized contour to significantly reduce operational stresses.”

https://www.ukap1000application.com/PDFDocs/Safety/UKP-GW-GL-740%20Rev%200.pdf

As implied above, load following thermal/mechanical stress cycles are largely limited to the steam turbine. If MSR designers want to keep reactor temperature constant, they can coordinate feedwater flow to the steam generators with reactor power to maintain constant reactor average temperature over the full range of operation.

As power is reduced the reactor hot leg temperature will cool slightly and the cold leg temperature will warm slightly, keeping the average constant. If the engineers want to eliminate even that small temperature swing they can modulate salt flow rate with power to keep the inlet and outlet temperatures constant over the full range of operation.

Six ounces of thorium can produce an 80 year lifetime supply of electricity in a LFTR. It requires no enrichment or fabrication into fuel rods. Assuming the fuel is free will induce a negligible error in the overall economic analysis.

These plants can be run a few percent over demand with fine control managed by dumping excess power into a resistor bank. This would allow near instant slew rates without subjecting the plant to rapid power jockeying. The grid itself could be used as the resistor bank by modulating power factor. With fuel cost essentially zero, they could run the plants continuously at 100% and avoid any thermal cycling of the steam turbine/generator, using the excess power to make hydrogen or carbon based fuel from atmospheric CO2.

http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf

As electric vehicles become more numerous, nighttime charging and smart grid technology will level out the day/night swings.

The addition of intermittent, unreliable, undispatchable wind and solar farms has made load balancing much more difficult.

“- the combination of wind facilities +balancing facilities is significantly less economical than using the balancing facility at rated output in base-loaded mode.”

http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/57905/wind-power-and-co2-emissions

High variability induced by wind and solar farms may cancel all claimed emissions reductions.

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2010/04/19/daily11.html

Intermittent, unreliable, undispatchable energy sources must be backed up by reliable dispatchable plants. The true value of intermittent, unreliable, undispatchable kWh's is the cost of fuel saved, 0.5 cents/kWh nuclear, 3.2 cents/kWh coal and 5.2 cents/kWh gas. The simplest non breeder uranium MSR would have a fuel cost of 0.1 cents/kWh, essentially zero for breeders.

The real reason nuclear plants do not load follow is that they have the lowest fuel cost. Intermittent, unreliable, undispatchable wind and solar kWh's would have no value on a nuclear powered grid.

“Several meltdowns of liquid metal cooled reactors have resulted from such clogging incidents.”

A sodium cooled experimental reactor with solid metal fuel and a serious design defect has little relevance to future MSR's.

Comments on 8.8 Thermal windows and material choices

This entire section boils down to “Some R&D is required.” No one denies that. There is no reason to believe that any of the issues mentioned are show stoppers.

Comments on 8.9 The Brayton cycle and MSR reactors

The Wright Brothers did not build an SR-71. Henry Ford did not start with the GT-40. Like all technologies, the MSR will start simple and build on that experience.

“the fact that our turbine would have to be designed to withstand having a mixture of molten salt and fluorided fuel passed through it at very high temperatures.”

There would be an intermediate heat exchanger, no fission products outside containment.

“oh! but we almost forgot about that chemical processing plant and its net energy inputs, say we deduct 5-10% of reactor power output to account for running that,”

6 ounces of thorium can produce about 1,000,000 kWh's. So processing 6 ounces of fission products requires 100,000 kWh's? Not a chance.

Comments on 8.10 Piping, FMEA and leak prevention

“the major risk to any MSR reactor is ….either a fire effecting its graphite core (which for a LF reactors running at low vapour pressure is a greater risk than with any other graphite cored reactor) or more likely a burst pipe.”

The fire risk was covered in a previous section.

“the major danger with a LF plant is that somewhere in the lengthy network of pipes that it and its CPP consist of, something breaks.”

The author carefully avoids describing the exact sequence of events that results in a large scale release of fission products to the atmosphere that he alludes to.

There is a strong incentive to minimize fuel volume. Therefore the intermediate heat exchangers will be close to the reactor vessel to keep pipe length short.

Small leaks will solidify on the floor. Large leaks will flow to the drain tanks. There is no large inventory of volatile fission products. There is no mechanism for a powerful explosion. The reactor room will be inerted.

During normal operations volatile fission products will bubble out of the hot salt as they are formed and be converted to a form that is non volatile and easy to store away from the reactor. Fission produces that do not come out of the molten salt are in forms that are stable at very high temperature. So there will be no inventory of volatile fission products available for release in an accident, as can happen when solid fuel melts under accident conditions.

So what is the detailed scenario resulting in a large scale release of fission products to the countryside? What is the chemical composition of the fission products? What are the melting and boiling temperatures of those compounds? What mechanism drives them out of the plant into the atmosphere?

By what path do they escape?

“Take for example the pipe at the base of the reactor that allows us to dump the core to the emergency dump tanks… suppose for example that it bursts during a dump scenario? Obviously we need a containment vessel around the pipe to catch any leaks.”

The answer is in the drawing of the FUJI MSR in your report. The spill would flow down the floor drain into the emergency drain tank.

“Also simply relying on gravity would be inadequate in certain scenarios, a pump on a separate stem (or a tank of inert high pressure gas connected up to the pressure vessel to “encourage” the fuel to drain away), would be necessary.”

Gravity has not failed in 14 billion years. Describe in detail an accident sequence of events where the proposed additional equipment would prevent a large offsite release of fission products that could not be prevented without that extra equipment.

“But what if the trigger for the accident is a clogging of fuel channels (as discussed earlier) by solidified fuel?”

The solidified fuel would heat up and re-melt.

“If we dump in that scenario we might cause the dump pipe to clog also, likely leading to a criticality incident or its failure and a breach.”

Maintaining criticality under normal operation with the minimum concentration of fissile material is the challenge. The poor geometry and lack of moderation in a spill avoids criticality problems.

“So we would need a thermal regulation system around the pipe to ensure it can be heated or cooled as necessary. Also I don’t like the idea behind this “freeze plug”. I realise the passive safety benefits it brings, but it’s just going to be too slow to act in a real emergency and there’s too much that can go wrong with it. If I were an engineer at such a plant I’d want a big shiny red “dump core now!” panic button on my control panel.”

I agree. I have never felt good about the fan cooled freeze plug.

If I were responsible for this part of the plant I would ask a dozen bright engineers to independently come up with a plan for handling this safety function, then pass them around and generate lists of pros and cons for each.

My suggestion would be to use a thermal rupture disk, or a flapper valve held shut by a thermal fuse or electromagnet. In each case there would be the option for quick manual operation. There would be an orifice to allow a continuous metered flow of salt into the drain tank. That flow would maintain the temperature of the drain line and verify its functional availability. The salt stream would be continuously pumped back into the primary loop. It could also be the source of fuel for continuous chemical processing.

There would also be another dump path with a conventional control valve; it would be the primary valve, the thermal device would be the backup, along with the floor drain.

In the extremely unlikely situation where everything fails the stockholders are going to take a hit, but there will be no major release of fission products to the countryside.

“see how in the process of getting one short section of pipe back to within a reasonable safety margin the result has been for it to balloon into a massively complex system in the space of 5 minutes.”

Welcome to the real world of engineering. All large scale power plants are complicated. A Boeing 787 is more complicated then a Cessna 150. MSR's can be much smaller and less complicated than coal plants with emissions controls of the same output.

“the benefits of a Molten-Salt fuel system are outweighted by the lengthy inspection process of all that pipe work.”

The compact design of the MSR allowed by high temperature and lack of active safety systems and complicated emission control systems makes the piping far less complex and easier to inspect than a conventional coal or nuclear plant.

The failure of that piping would be less dangerous than the failure of fuel system piping at a natural gas plant.

“any MSR reactor would inevitably have to have large stockpiles of salt stored on site or nearby,”

Why? Small amounts of material are coming out of the system; why/how would we put in large amounts of additional material?

“Fluorine gas is extremely toxic (several times more deadly than chlorine”

Toxicity Data, Fluorine
LC50 inhal (rat)
185 ppm (300 mg/m3; 1 h)

Toxicity Data, Chlorine
LC50 inhal (rat)
293 ppm (879 mg/m3; 1 h)

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4911&page=320

By volume fluorine is less than twice as toxic as chlorine. The U.S. consumes ten billion kg of chlorine each year; enough to kill every man woman and child in the U.S. every 45 minutes. Essentially all of that is manufactured and consumed under conditions less secure than those inside a reactor containment building.

Fluorine will not be stored or transported in elemental form in large quantities. The chemical processing equipment in LFTR's will be very small by industrial standards, and they will be among the most secure and well regulated in the world.

“ Another misconception of the LFTR fans is that LFTR’s will not require the same large exclusion zones as other reactors. A.”

Other reactors do not have large exclusion zones, nor will LFTR's. Check Google Earth.

“A LFTR is essentially just a glorified chemical plant”

A large LFTR will produce a few pounds of fission products per day. The image of a large industrial chemical plant is false. Many common industrial facilities use far larger quantities of hazardous materials under far less secure conditions.

I expect the chemical processing will be done in sealed tamper resistant modules with standardized size and simple connections so that as processing technology improves, the older plants can have access to the latest technology.


8.11 MSR’s, A proliferate problem?

There are two relatively easy, fast, cheap paths to nuclear explosives;

1... Extraction of U235 from natural or reactor grade uranium. (enrichment technology).
2... Plutonium production using a simple unpressurized water cooled graphite reactor with natural uranium fuel.

There is at least one difficult, time consuming, and expensive path to nuclear explosives; using a commercial nuclear power plant.

If a group or nation wants to build nuclear explosives, the optimum level of proliferation resistance is that which is just barely easy enough to convince them to take the most difficult, time consuming, and expensive path to nuclear explosives.

All proposed future reactor designs are far beyond this standard, so it makes no sense to add complexity and cost to a plant design in response to the proliferation issue. That just makes it harder to build new energy sources that are much cheaper than burning fossil fuel, and there in lies a real risk.

The solution to the proliferation issue is education.

8.13 LFTR, the Kool-Aid Fuelled Reactor?

A collection of ad hominem attacks and insults, nothing substantial.

The Molten Salt Reactor Family: Uranium Fuel

In an earlier post, I stated that there were many different possible Molten Salt Reactor designs. I pointed to nuclear fuel as one possible source of reactor design variations. There are two potential nuclear fuel cycles that can be used in Molten Salt Reactors. Choice of fuel cycles can make a difference in reactor designs. Today, I want to focus on one of the two fuel cycle options, uranium. There are in fact several different types of uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors.

The first type that I would consider could be called the ORNL technology uranium fueled MSR. The reactor could be a direct development of the technology used in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. Such a reactor would use LEU with up to 19.75% U-235, and could operate at temperatures of up to 704°C (1300°F), it would. Without nuclear proliferation concerns, the U-235 content could be raised higher, even 100% U-235 could be used. ORNL technologists preferred building their MSR core structure with Hastelloy ® N, an nickel alloy. This high operating temperature allows fos significant improvements in electrical generation thermal efficiency compared to conventional Light Water Reactors (LWRs).

In addition the UMSR would be simple and compact. It would not require massive steel pressure vessels, and massive concrete containment structures. These are two characteristics that could potentially lower reactor manufacturing costs. Thus the UMSR is likely to be less expensive to manufacture and less expensive to operate than conventional reactors. The ORNL Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) proved to be highly reliable, thus the UMSR could compete with LWR as base load power sources. Advance reactor safety features, that are unique to Molten Salt Reactors could be included in the UMSR design. With low enriched uranium (LEU) the UMSR operate as a U-238 fuel cycle plutonium converter. A converter is a reactor that produces some new nuclear fuel, Unlike a nuclear breeder, a converter produces less than one atom of new nuclear fuel for every atom of old fuel it uses.

A U-238 cycle MSR converter would solve much of the nuclear waste problem that characterizes LWRs. MSRs are good plutonium burners, although they do not dispose of plutonium quite as efficiently as fast reactors. Because Xenon-135 can be continuously removed from the MSR core, thermal MSRs can convert U-238 into plutonium at a higher conversion ratio than LWRs can. And because Molten Salt Fuel can be easily reprocessed in its liquid form, any plutonium removed during reprocessing could be returned to the MSR core. Thus in MSRs plutonium and other actinides do not pose a long term nuclear wast problem. In fact faster MSRs are potentially so good at destroying nuclear waste, that both Russian and American reactor scientists have proposed using them to destroy the actinides waste from LWRs. What is left over from the nuclear waste destroying MSR process is fission products, much of which becomes useful for a variety of industrial uses very quickly, and all of which will be no more radioactive - and thus no more dangerous - than newly mind uranium within 300 years. (See this Google lecture by Kirk Sorensen, on the MSR solution to the so called nuclear waste problem.)

It has been a long standing contention of Nuclear Green that it is less expensive to build reactors in factories than to build them in the field. Although it is possible to factory manufacture large reactors in the form of kits containing several hundred large modules, smaller kits which contain as few as a half dozen modules are desirable. It would also be highly desirable if the modules could all be moved by truck or by train. The smallest practical size for such a reactor would be 100 MWe, although a 200-300 MWe size might be desirable.

Thus the UMSR, if it were to bew developed would be a transitional step in the evolution of reactors toward the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (the LFTR).

A second form of Uranium fueled MSRs would be what I call the Uranium Big Lots Reactor. The name Big Lots came from reactor design ideas I thought about while shopping in a Big Lots Store. The Big Lots Reactor was originally intended to be a LFTR, but it would work well with an all uranium fuel formula. The Big Lots idea was triggered by some comments by physicist David LeBlanc, who suggested MSRs cost could be lowered by building reactors from lower cost materials. What I realized during my Big Lots excursion was that for a small amount of the MSR performance sacrifice - say lowering operating temperatures from 700°C to 600°C - and by anticipating less capacity utilization - say a 15% to 25% capacity factor rather than the 90% capacity factor expected of base load generators. The Big Lots reactor was intended to load follow, to produce peak load and back up electrical generation. These were grid functions that both conventional nuclear power and renewable energy sources were not very good at. could be shifted from fossil fuels, probably without an increase in electrical price.

The Big Lots reactor would then be a discount store version of the Molten Salt Reactor. Not quite as good as the UMSR or the LFTR at pumping out full power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but very good for putting out power when the temperature runs to 103°F on a hot Texas Summer afternoon, or for providing quickly accessible nuclear power, if a wind farm looses its breeze or a base load nuclear plant unexpectedly shuts down. MSRs are superbly suited for backup role, but they can be designed to automatically shut down when they reach their top operating temperature. Fission product decay will keep the fluid salts in the core at peak temperature for some time. Power is transmitted to the electrical generating system by heated salt, and heated salt can be kept on tap for a week or so. Then the reactor will fire up again for a short while, only long enough to produce another few days worth of fission product decay heat.

I have recommended a number of steps to decrease nuclear costs in general and the costs of Molten Salt Reactors in particular. All of these steps could be applied to Big Lots Reactor cost lowering. Small size reactors represent a smaller risk to lenders and investors. Interest rates are tied to risks, and the lower the risk, the lower the interest rate. Thus building small reactors will quite likely lower interest rates on nuclear projects.

Big Lot reactors can be housed in underground silos, and thus would be invulnerable form attacks by large aircraft. Existing sites for natural gas fired power plants can be used to house Big Lot reactors. This would lead to further cost savings. For example the existing grid connection can be reused, saving the cost of building a new grid connection system.

Because they would only be expected to operate a small percentage of the time, and then frequently at less than full power, the Big Lot Reactor would have lower maintenance cost. Neutron radiation caused damage to reactor materials would be significantly less than in base load UMSRs.

Both the Big Lot and the base load UMSR could come in one and two fluid versions, although most would probably be one fluid reactors, because proliferation concerns would require mixing U-235 with U-238, and Plutonium involved in the nuclear process, should be kept in the same carrier fluid as the Uranium. Thus only one fluid would be required.

Thermal UMSRs would in all likelihood graphite moderated, although it has been proposed that thermal MSRs could also be heavy water moderated. This raises safety concerns.

If we decide to not use graphite as a moderator, and as I will indicate in a separate post on the use of graphite in MSRs, there are reasons why future MSR designers might decide to forego the use of graphite, we can still choose to moderate the nuclear process through carrier salt moderation. The primary carrier salt moderators are lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2). These salts will slow neutrons to an epithermal speed range. More fissionable materials are required to sustain a nuclear reaction in an epithermal reaction than to sustain a chain reaction in a thermal reactor, and there ars some other issues as well, but if graphite concerns become to a major issue, epithermal may serve as a significant option.

Before we leave the world of graphite reactors behind, I would like to mention one more family of thermal Molten salt option, the Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR) option being explored at the University of California Berkley and at ORNL. This reactor family might be considered a cousin of the MSR which uses liquid Salts are coolants but not as fuel carriers. The nuclear fuel for these reactors embeds the U-233, U-235 and/or Pu-239 in graphite, either in the form of graphite core structures or in the form of graphite pebbles. The AHTR is thus a hybrid of MSR and gas cooled graphite reactor technologies. ORNL is developing a small advanced high temperature reactor (SmAHTR), as a source of industrial process heat. The SmAHTR like Big Lots Reactor can serve as a source of peak demand electrical capacity, through the use of stored heated liquid salt.

Finally, it is possable to build fast Molten Salt Reactors, and they have a number of advantages over Liquid Metal Fas Breeder Reactors. Fast U-238 breeding MSRs can be designed to use either Fluoride or Chloride salts. Although it is possible to design a two fluid Fast Thorium Breeder of a hybred U-238/Th-232 fast breeder, it would certainly be possible to build a single fluid uranium cycle breeder. French physicists, working at Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie, of the University of Grenoble, (France), have proposed building a single fluid fast MSR which they intend to use as a thorium breeder, but which can be used as either a hybred breeder or a uranium cycle breeder. The French Reactor designers propose to eliminate beryllium from the salt formula. Lithium is a a moderator, but some what less so than beryllium, and there are some secondary safety advantages to removing beryllium from the reactor core.

The French molten salt fast breeder is primarily a thorium breeder, it offers some attractive features which I will discuss in a later post. In addition. Uranium/thorium hybred breeding cycles require firther discussion, and of course so does both thorium breeders and thorium converters.

Kurt Cobb on Resources, Energy, Thorium and Molten Salt Reactor Technology

Kurt Cobb, is an energy writer whose vision is in many respects clear headed, and who has acknowledged both the problems and potential while appearing to be intrigued by Molten Salt Reactor/thorium fuel cycle ideas. Cobb has understood that nuclear power offered a solution to the future problems of global energy. In 2009 Cobb identified the problem,

The end of the fossil fuel era is coming sooner than most people believe as exponentially increasing fossil fuel consumption brings us ever closer to the day when production will peak for oil, natural gas and coal and then begin irrevocable declines. The only options left for powering a modern technical society will then be solar, wind, tidal, hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear. And of these, only nuclear can conceivably be located wherever it is needed at the scale required.

The earth, Cobb argued, had plenty of resources needed to sustain industrial civilization,

granite contains many common metals such aluminum, iron, magnesium, titanium and manganese. Many more minerals including uranium are available in quantities of parts per million. Seawater contains most of the elements on the periodic table, the source of which is the erosion produced by streams and rivers feeding the oceans. The air contains rare "noble" gases that are important to industrial civilization including argon, neon, helium, krypton and xenon.

The visions of the resource optimists may not work out

here's why the future may not work out as Simon and other cornucopians envision. The main energy resources we use today are mineral resources. Oil, natural gas, and coal provide 86 percent of the world's energy. All of these resources are thought to be growing more abundant through the magic of the resource pyramid. But, if you examine the pyramid closely, you will see that not only do low-grade fossil fuel resources require better technology to extract them, they also require increasing amounts of energy to run that technology. At some point the amount of energy needed to bring low-grade deposits of oil, natural gas and coal to the surface and process and transport them will be more than the energy we get from these resources. At that point they will cease to be energy sources, and the vast, remaining ultra-low-grade deposits of these fuels will be useless to us except perhaps as feedstocks for chemicals.

Cobb adds,

Without a transition to vast new supplies of nuclear and renewable energy, the promise that we will be able to go all the way to the bottom of the resource pyramid is a mere daydream. The resource pyramid only shows what is possible. It does not guarantee that humans will achieve it. If peaks in fossil fuel production are nearing, either society will have to learn to get along without many of its critical resources, or it will have to make the transition to alternative energy swiftly as part of an engineering and planning feat that would be unparalleled in human history.

Cobb is pessimistic about the ability of society to make a rapid and timely transition to post fossil fuel energy sources,

Despite the pressing need for a rapid energy transition, it is doubtful that such a transition will be initiated by market forces before fossil fuels become scarce and therefore very expensive. The reason for this is that markets consistently wrongly assess the mineral economy, projecting what resource economist Douglas Reynolds calls "the illusion of decreasing scarcity." That means that prices stay relatively low until shortly before a resource peaks. . .

Because of the very long lead times required to transform our liquid-fuel based infrastructure, for example, into one that runs on electricity, undertaking such a conversion while oil or other fossil fuel supplies are declining could be very challenging indeed. The alternatives may not expand quickly enough to make up for the energy being lost. In that case, the whole transition project would be imperiled by the declining total energy available to society. That means that money and therefore energy would have to be taken from somewhere else in an already squeezed economy to keep the transition going. Contrary to expectations that so-called green industries will create new jobs, this scenario would result in the creation of new green jobs probably at the expense of jobs elsewhere in the economy (that is, barring improbable and extraordinary sudden leaps in the energy efficiency of the economy).

In such circumstances most people would naturally be focused on just making it through the day with little concern or appetite for spending a considerable amount of their incomes to buy electric cars or retrofit their homes for energy efficiency or passive solar heat. Nor would there likely be much appetite for raising taxes for a government-led transition program and/or set of subsidies related to making a transition away from fossil fuels.

Given the current skyrocketing prices of all fossil fuels, it appears that we are very late in the game indeed. It is not clear that a transition program started now would be completed before oil and possibly natural gas began to decline. But, it is clear that the public--at least in the United States--already has little appetite for a government-led solution when the major U. S. presidential candidates are proposing to lower gasoline taxes this summer to ease the burden on family budgets.

Cobb argued that renewable electrical generators poses difficulties for powering a civilization because of their energy density problem,

Let's take a 500-megawatt power plant which by itself can power a city of 300,000. (A megawatt is one million watts.) It will sit astride a fairly large plot of land. A coal-fired plant near me is just under that capacity (495 MW) and sits on about 300 acres. Most of that land, however, is essentially devoted to undeveloped transmission right-of-way filled with ponds, woods and streams. Only a small portion is covered by plant facilities including coal storage. I estimate less than 30 acres.

For new wind projects huge 5-megawatt wind generators are just now being deployed. If we take these as typical (and they are not), then using an estimate of the direct land footprint for wind towers of 0.38 acres per tower, we find that we'd need 100 towers covering 38 acres. But wind turbines run at only about 30 percent capacity because the wind doesn't blow all the time. This compares to about 70 percent capacity for coal-fired power plants. So we need to multiply 100 towers by about 2 1/3 to get the number of towers we'd need to match the operating capacity of one coal-fired plant. That means we'd need about 233 towers with a direct land footprint of 87 acres. That doesn't seem too bad. And, the land under the turbines is still available for farming and other purposes. The overall direct effects on the land and water are certainly less when compared to the coal plant.

But we're not done. The spacing between towers is typically at least five diameters of the rotor. That doesn't sound like much. But for the 5-megawatt towers in this example, the spacing would be 2,065 feet times 232--we don't need to separate the last tower from another tower beyond it. Then we'd add the diameter of the rotors--413 feet times 233--and we get a distance equivalent to about 110 miles. So, we'd need a line of 5-megawatt turbines stretching 110 miles. In theory, we'd want to split them up and put them in various locations in which the wind blows hardest at different times. But the total length of the line would still be at least 110 miles. If we take the largest separation recommended between towers which is 10 diameters of the rotors, we'd have to just about double that distance.

By comparison most people who live 110 miles from a coal-fired power plant are rarely even aware that it might be a source of electricity for them. And, the plant is certainly not a direct irritation. The lesson here, however, is not one of aesthetics. It is an illustration of the disparity in power densities between those energy sources on which we currently rely and the alternatives now being proposed and deployed.

The power density problem for solar energy is no less daunting.

Cobb then puts his finger on the problem,

We will be obliged to devote vast tracts of space--far more vast than the buildings they serve--to support the energy use of our current infrastructure.

This may not be impossible, but it will certainly be costly and socially disruptive.

In 2008 Cobb saw the failure of the first nuclear age as a potential tragedy for humanity. Cobb wrote,

It is a sad commentary that so many who knew the planet would one day run short of fossil fuels were unable to convince the world to embrace nuclear power in a more thoroughgoing way. With enough development, with careful and serious attention to the waste problem, and with lower-cost, decentralized designs that maximize safety, nuclear power might have succeeded in making any decline in fossil fuel availability just another historical footnote--but only if deployed on a large enough scale and far enough in advance of such a decline.

Now it may be too late. The time for the development of the nuclear economy appears to have come and gone with few people even realizing it.

Yet in the same essay, Cobb criticized the Price-Anderson Act by characterizing it as limiting the

liability for nuclear plant operators.

In fact Price-Anderson arguably protects the government from the consequences of having to pick up the first ten billion dollars of the bill, in the event of a major nuclear accident. The major accomplishment of Price Anderson is to set up an insurance pool that protects under funded nuclear operators.

Even in 2008 Cobb was prepaired to engage in real dialogue with nuclear supporters, and too acknowledge,

The solution, of course, is to build breeder reactors and I have seen designs which address the proliferation problem, in part, by using a hybrid technology that allows non-breeder and breeder operation in sequence and so the reactor doesn't have to be refueled for something on the order of 50 years.

Cobb was pessimistic about such a future,however,

I have come to the conclusion that the regulatory hurdles facing such designs are so great that it is unlikely they will be approved and built in time to address the energy deficits we will be facing after fossil fuels peak.

Cobb believed that the idea of using thorium as a basis for the nuclear fuel cycle was promising, and

besides availability, thorium has three additional distinct advantages over uranium fuel. First, thorium fuel elements can be designed in a way that make it difficult to recover the fissile uranium produced by breeding for bomb making. This reduces the likelihood of nuclear weapons spreading to nonnuclear nations that adopt thorium-based fuel technologies.

Second, the waste stream can be considerably smaller since unlike current reactors which often use only about 2 percent of the available fuel, thorium-fueled reactors with optimal designs could burn nearly all of the fuel. This is the main reason besides its sheer natural abundance that thorium could provide such long-lived supplies of fuel for nuclear power.

Third, the danger from the waste of the thorium fuel cycle is potentially far less long-lived. The claim is that the reprocessed waste will be no more radioactive than thorium ore after about 300 years. This claim is based on the idea that virtually all of the long-lived radioactive products of breeding will be consumed in the reactor before the final round of reprocessing takes place.

Cobb also notes the potential usefulness and value of Molten Salt Reactors in managing the thorium fuel cycle,

There are also practical hurdles for reprocessing solid fuel. But advocates of the so-called molten salt reactor claim that this design lessens the problem of reprocessing since the products of breeding can be continuously extracted and processed from the molten liquid stream inside a closed fuel cycle. They also claim that the design is far less prone to accidents which might release radioactive materials into the environment. None of this, of course, solves the problems of existing reactors that use solid fuel assemblies. But it does suggest a plausible course for vastly expanding nuclear power generation with little worry about fuel supplies and fewer concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation.

Cobb points to what he believes is a possible problem with MSR nuclear technology,

The main concern about these replacements is whether they can be built fast enough to head off an overall reduction in the amount of energy available to society.

I will address this concern.

Cobb's latest essay on nuclear technology is titled, "The Road to Fukushima: The Nuclear Industry's Wrong Turn." While Cobb does not mention either Nuclear Green or Charles Barton, many of the ideas in this essay parallel, indas I have frequently expressed. The lead sentence to Cobb's essay states,

Nuclear researchers knew long ago that reactor designs now in wide use had already been bested in safety by another design.

Then Cobb asks,

Why did the industry turn its back on that design?

This is indeed a very troubling question, and one to which I have devoted a number of posts on Nuclear Green. Cobb asks,

Imagine a nuclear reactor that runs on fuel that could power civilization for millennia; cannot melt down; resists weapons proliferation; can be built on a relatively small parcel of land; and produces little hazardous waste. It sounds like a good idea, and it was a well-tested reality in 1970 when it was abandoned for the current crop of reactors that subject society to the kinds of catastrophes now on display in Japan.

This rather remarkable design is called the molten salt reactor (MSR), and it lost out for two reasons: 1) It wasn't compatible with the U.S. government's desire to have a civilian nuclear program that would have dual use, that is, that could supply the military with nuclear bomb-making materials. 2) Uranium-fueled light water reactors, which are in wide use today, already had a large, expensive infrastructure supporting them back in 1970. To build MSRs would have required the entire industry to retool or at least create another expensive parallel infrastructure. And, that's how MSRs became the victim of lock-in.

Much of this simply parafrases Nuclear Green, although I have recently offered a somewhat more complex view on why the government turned its back on Molten Salt Reactor technology.

Whatever the actual reason for the exclusion of Molten Salt Reactor technology by the United States Government, Cobb is quite correct about the consequences of that decision,

Lock-in has worked in much the same way for the nuclear industry. The decision within U.S. government circles to focus on light water reactors and abandon MSRs relegated the latter to a footnote in the history of civilian nuclear power. And, because the United States was the leader in civilian nuclear technology at the time, every nation followed us.

Then Cobb points to an important question,

So, should the world look again at this "old" technology as a way forward for nuclear power after Fukushima?

Cobb answers his own question,

My sympathies are with the MSR advocates. If the world had adopted MSR technology early on, there would have been no partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, no explosion at Chernobyl, and no meltdown and subsequent dispersion of radioactive byproducts into the air and water at Fukushima. It's true that MSR technology is not foolproof. But its very design prevents known catastrophic problems from developing. The nuclear fuel is dissolved in molten salt which, counterintuitively, is the coolant. If the reactor overheats, a plug at the base melts away draining the molten salt into holding tanks that allow it to cool down. Only gravity is required, so power outages don't matter.

As for leaks, a coolant leak (that is a water leak) in a light water reactor, can quickly become dangerous. If there is a leak from an MSR, the fuel, which is dissolved in the molten salt, leaks out with it, thereby withdrawing the source of the heat. You end up with a radioactive mess inside the containment building, but that's about it.

If the world had adopted MSRs at the beginning of the development of civilian nuclear power, electricity production might now be dominated by them. And, we might be busily constructing wind generators and solar panels to replace the remaining coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Would there have been accidents at MSRs? Certainly. Would these accidents have been large enough and scary enough to end new orders for nuclear power plants as happened after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States? I doubt it.

Cobb is still pessimistic however,

Having said all this, I believe that MSR technology will never be widely adopted. The same problem that derailed it early in the history of civilian nuclear power is still with us. We still have lock-in for light water reactors. Yes, the new designs are admittedly quite a bit safer. But these designs still don't solve as many problems as MSRs do, and they continue to rely on uranium for their fuel. MSRs have shown themselves capable of running on thorium, a metal that is three times more abundant than uranium, and 400 times more abundant than the only isotope of uranium that can be used for fuel, U-235. This is the basis for the claim that MSRs fueled with thorium could power civilization for millennia. . . .

. . . in the United States it is easier to predict that we'll see little progress. In the U.S. it is the industry that tells the government what new nuclear technologies will be developed rather than the other way around. And, the American nuclear industry is committed to light water reactors.

I believe that even if the Fukushima accident had not occurred, nuclear power generation would probably have done no more than maintain its share of the total energy pie in the coming decades. Now, I am convinced that that share will shrink as people in democratic societies reject new nuclear plants.

Yet Cobb also acknowledges that one nation is interested in developing Molten Salt Reactor Technology,

The Chinese have announced that they are interested in pursuing MSRs and the use of thorium to fuel them. Perhaps in China--where the nuclear industry is synonymous with the government and therefore does what the government tells it to--MSRs might actually be deployed. I have my doubts. Even China suffers from the lock-in problem.

I disagree with Cobb's pessimism. Although I believe what he calls the "Nuclear Industry, the current small set of reactor manufactures outside Canada, India and China are wedded to Light Water Reactor technology, the path to the development and deployment to Molten Salt Reactors is open wide open. Molten Salt Reactors are simpler, will require less labor to construct, and fewer building materials than Light Water Reactors. This means that there is a high likelihood that Molten Salt Reactors will be cheaper to manufacture, and simpler to deploy. This gives MSRs superior scalability. MSRs are also more efficient than LWRs. MSRs can do things that neither renewables nor LWRs can do. They can produce industrial process heat of up to !200 C. With their lower costs, MSRs can offer back up generation and peak generation capacity to the electrical industry.

Thus the question is will MSRs spread from China, which appears to be committed to the development of MSR technology, or will MSR technology be developed by other societies as well? There are several paths to MSR development. MSRs could be developed in the United States by one or more National Laboratories, MSR technology can be developed as a ship propulsion technology by the United States Navy. MSR technology can be developed by the United States military as a means of supplying electricity to military bases, and for military operations. MSR technology can be developed by private manufacturing businesses, which are interested in turning their manufacturing skills into a new source of energy related revenue. MSR technology could be developed by large fossil fuel energy companies, which seek a means of remaining in the energy business after their fossil fuel business declines. MSR technology could also be developed by a group of nations, which are attracted by the energy advantages MSRs offer. Thus there are many potential pathos to MSR development, and once adventurers start down one of them, other paths are likely to quickly open up.

When I began to write about MSRs in 2007, virtually no one had heard of them. On the Internet I found, Bruce Hoglund's Molten Salt Interest Pages, and Kirk Sorensen's Energy from Thorium. Fast forward to 2011, and the Molten Salt Reactor, mainly in the form of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, a name given by Kirk Sorensen, is widely known. The idea of a thorium fuel cycle Molten Salt Reactor has been adopted for development by China as a promising new nuclear technology, as Kurt Cobb has pointed out. Other parties are looking with interest, but have not announced plans yet. I expect some MSR development plans to emerge before the end of 2012.

Nuclear Accidents and Public Perception of Nuclear Safety

Nuclear safety is both about public perception, the viewpoint of the enemies of nuclear power, and about actual industrial design and practice. Relative to other industries the safety practices of the nuclear industry are very good. This assessment can be made even though the nuclear industry has just gone through its second worst accident. An accident which involved not one but 4 reactors. There were significant releases of highly radioactive fission products, although the total public exposure was small. Workers at the Fukoshima Dai-ichi nuclear plant were exposed to higher levels of radiation, although not enough to toast them. Several reactors were destroyed, and explosions destroyed several containment buildings.

The Dai-ichi accident was due to a planning failure. The reactor site plan did not allow for a 10 + meter high tsunami, ands important reactor safety equipment was overwhelmed and taken out of service by a 10 + meter tsunami. Beyond the failure of the emergency back up generators, the Dai-Ichi reactors were were designed utilizing the nuclear safety science of the day, and while reasonably safe, they were not the safest reactors possible. Indeed the term "safest reactor possible" is ambiguous, because there is a history of nuclear safety, and the history of nuclear safety demonstrates that not every choice that was made regarding nuclear safety was made with the idea of developing the safest possible nuclear technology in mind.

Unfortunately the goal of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in the 1960's was not to create the safest possible nuclear technology, it was to promote the expansion of still very weak nuclear manufacturing and energy production industries to a position of dominance in electrical production. This can be illustrated by a document which Kirk Sorensen has recently drawn attention too. A 1962 report by the AEC to President Kennedy titled, "Civilian Nuclear Power."

This report was signed by a Nobel Prize winning scientist, who was also the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Glenn T. Seaborg. The word safety appeared only once in the report. One page 60 the report contained the suggestion that future licensing reviews should concentrate

on those features which have an effect on the health and safety of the general public.

the report added,

This will be easier to accomplish as reactors become more standardized.

Thus the attitude of the AEC and of Seaborg appears to have been to let nuclear safety take care of itself without further research. Nor did the AEC consider the safety potential of various nuclear technologies important enough to note in its Report to President Kennedy. This neglect was not by accident. Rather it reflected a fundamental attitude of the leadership of the Washington nuclear establishment, which included Seaborg, fellow AEC Commissioner James T. Ramsey, Congressman Chet Hollifield, and AEC bureaucrat Milton Shaw. Within a few years this neglect of nuclear safety would serve as a back drop for the development of a powerful anti-nuclear movement, and a split within the AEC's own research establishment, that would see research scientists testifying against the AEC before Congressional committees.

The Washington nuclear establishment appears to have jointly held a broad set of beliefs about nuclear technology which included:

* The safety of Light Water Reactor (LWR) technology had been established by the United States Navy
* Reactor safety could be assured by adhering to United States Navy nuclear safety practices
* Of all advanced nuclear technologies, Liquid Metal Fast Breeder (LMFBR) technology was the most promising
*Like LWR technology, LMFBR technology was mature
* Other nuclear technologies were less promising, and there for future AEC programs should focus on LWR and LMFBR technologies
* LWR technology simply needed to be implemented, and obstacles should be moved out of that path
* The next step in the development of nuclear technology was the construction of a LMFBR prototype

This set of beliefs was to have an extremely unfortunate effect on the development of nuclear power in the United States, and globally.

It should be noted that scientists within the AEC's own research establishments did not accept the Washington Nuclear Establishment's consensus. Scientists at the AEC's national Laboratories were by no means satisfied with the safety of Light Water Reactors. In particular scientists at the AEC's reactor research facility in Idaho, as well as at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were concerned that not enough was known about reactor safety, to judge the safety of Light Water Reactors. In addition a continuing series of accidents involving LMFBR prototypes, suggested that the maturity of LMFBR technology had not reached to level of safety that would justify a description of that technology as mature.

One particular problem troubled early nuclear safety researchers,

Because of the scarcity of useful information on fission-product release from fuels, it was necessary, in order to evaluate the safety of early nuclear reactors, to assume that 100% or a large percentage of the fission products would be released to the containment systems in nuclear reactor accidents.

Thus early on conceptual evaluations of nuclear accidents began to paint dark pictures of huge numbers of civilian casualties. Unfortunately, these dark pictures. though not justified by research, still influence public concerns over nuclear safety. The Washington nuclear establishment, focused as it was on the development of a nuclear industry, did not understand the extent to which the public perception of nuclear power would be influenced by the concerns of reactor scientists. Thus by the late 1960's as the nuclear establishment's project was taking shape, the public's perception of the danger of that project was also growing. The nuclear establishment's opposition to further nuclear safety research, which had emerged during the 1960's, became item one in the case against nuclear power presented by a powerful and growing anti-nuclear movement.

In addition to its mistaken beliefe that the safety of light water reactors was established beyond reasonable doubt, the nuclear establishment had concluded that the liquid metal fast breeder reactor wasw by far the prefered line of development for the future of nuclear power. Yet scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory had been able to demonstrate that reactors cooled by liquid salts had the potential to offer numerous advantages over water or liquid metal cooled reactors. Not the least of those advantages lay in the relm of nuclear safety. Molten Salt nuclear technology has superior safety potential, but since the Washington nuclear establishment underestimated the importance of the nuclear safety problem, it did not considered MSR safety potential to be an important attribute.

I personally have no doubt that in most situations that reactors are extremely safe when judged by conventional industrial safety standards. Those standards, however, have not penetrated public perception of nuclear power, and we still face both a public and political leadership, which still believes that the consequences of a nuclear accident may be far worse, than is rationally possible, and hens reactors are far less safe, than experience suggests they are.

It is clear that LWRs are not 100% safe. The Fukushima Dai-ichi accident (or accidents) has demonstrated that at least some safety features of older reactors can be overwealmed by natural disasters. To date the consequences of the Dai-ichi accident have fallen far short of a catastrophy. But whether the public is aware of the distinction between an accident and a catastrophy is open to question. For the enemies of nuclear power, acident and catastrophy are the same thing.

It is clear however, that reactors that could have withstood the natural events that brought about the Dai-ichi accidents are possible. It is clear that better nuclear safety is possible. Better public information on nuclear safety is also possible. It is urgently important to move forwards with the development of safe, low cost and scaliable nuclear technology will be of vital importance for the future of sociate. We now have lss than 40 years to accomplish this. The nuclear safety issue must be resolved, and the public reassured that a nuclear future wqill be a safew future.

Have the Chinese Been Reading Energy from Thorium or Nuclear Green?

Last week the Chinese Academy of Science announced that it planned to finance the development of a Chinese Thorium Breeding Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) or as it is called in the United States, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). The announcement came in a news report from Weihui.news365.com.cn. The announcement was relayed to Westerners who were interested in Thorium breeding molten salt reactors in a discussion thread comment posted by Chinese Scientist Hua Bai, last Friday. Kirk Sorensen, Brian Wang, and I all posted about Bai's announcement on Sunday, January 30.

In addition to these posts, the thread which Hua Bai started contains the revelation that the engineer who heads the Chinese Molten Salt Reactor Project is none other than Jiang Mianheng, a son of Retired Chinese President, Jiang Zemin. In addition to being President of People's China, Jiang was the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission, suggesting the likelihood that Jiang Mianheng has military ties. He is the cofounder of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, and a former lead researcher in the Chinese Space Program, as well as Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The presence of such a well connected Chinese science leader suggests that the Chinese TMSR project is regarded as important by the Chinese leadership. Thus the Chinese leadership, unlike the American Political andscientific leadership has grasped the potential of molten salt nuclear technology.

Yesterday, "horos11" commented on my blog, Nuclear Green,

I read this, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

After all, this site and others have been sounding the clarion call to action on this, and I should be glad that someone finally heeded it and its getting traction in a place that really matters, but I have a sinking feeling that:

a. its going to take far less than their planned 20 years

b. they are going to succeed beyond their wildest expectations.

Which means that the next, giant sucking sound we may hear is the sound of the 5 trillion dollar energy market heading east, further depressing our economy, weakening the dollar (and the euro) and ultimately making the US economy dependent on rescue from the chinese in the future (when they are done rescuing themselves).

Yet, in the large scheme of things, this is a definite good, and may be our savior from anthropomorphic climate change.

so again, laugh? or cry. I guess its up to how you view things - I guess I'm tentatively laughing at the moment, but mostly from the overwhelming irony of all this.

Jason Ribeiro added,

I can't help but have a feeling of sour grapes about this. While I congratulate China for doing the obvious, America has its head buried so far in the sand it can't see straight. With all the internet clamor about LFTR that's been going on the internet in the past 3-4 years, it was the non-English speaking Chinese that finally got the message that this was a great idea worth investing in. Our leadership ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The Chinese News story on the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor reflects the clear Chinese thinking about the potential role of LFTRs in the future Chinese energy economy. I will paraphrase,

"the future of advanced nuclear fission energy - nuclear energy, thorium-based molten salt reactor system" project was officially launched. . . The scientific goal is to developed a new generation of nuclear energy systems [and to achieve commercial] use [in] 20 years or so. We intend to complete the technological research needed for this system and to assert intellectual property rights to this technology. Fossil fuel energy is being depleted, and solar and wind energy are not stable enough, while hydropower development has reached the limit of its potential.. . .

Nuclear power seems to offer us a very attractive future energy choice, high energy density, low carbon emissions, and the potential for sustainable development. . . . China has chosen {to make an energy] breakthrough in the direction of molten salt reactors. . . . this liquid fuel reactors has a simple structure and can run at atmospheric pressure, [it can use any fissionable material as fuel} and has other advantages. "This new stove" can be made very small, will operate with stabile nuclear fuel, and will run for several decades before replacement. After the thorium is completely used in the nuclear process the TMSR will produce nuclear waste will be only be one-thousandth of that produced by existing nuclear technologies.

As the world is still in the development of a new generation of nuclear reactors, the thorium-based independent research and development of molten salt reactors, will be possible to obtain all intellectual property rights. This will enable China to firmly grasp the lifeline of energy in their own hands.

Let the word "nuclear" no longer mean war.

In the past, people always talk about "core" colors. The Hiroshima atomic bomb, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, these are like a lingering nightmare that is marked in human history. But a new generation of nuclear power will take the color green, the mark of peace taking human beings into a new era.

Oh Wow! It sounds as if someone in China has been reading Nuclear Green or Energy from Thorium. And there is more!

In addition, the "new stove" operating at atmospheric pressure operation, rather than the traditional reactor operating at high pressure, will be simple and safe. "When the furnace temperature exceeds a predetermined value, in the bottom of the MSR core, a frozen plug of salt will automatically melt, releasing the liquid salt in the reactor core into an emergency storage tanks, and terminating the nuclear reaction," scientist Xu Hongjie told reporters, as the cooling agent is fluoride salts (the same salts that also carrying the nuclear fuel), after the liquid salt cools it turns solid, which prevents the nuclear fuel from leaking out of its containment, and thus will not pollute ground water causing an ecological disasters. The added safety opens up new possibilities for reactors, they can be built underground, completely isolating radioactive materials from the reactor, also the underground location will protect the reactor from an enemy's weapon attack. Reactors can be built in large cities, in the wilderness, or in remote villages.

Well Kirk Sorensen and I wanted our ideas to become national priorities. We just did not know in what country it would happen first. Unfortunately the leadership of the United States, continues to be determined to lead this nation into the wilderness of powerlessness, while the leadership of communist China is alert to the possibilities of a new energy age. Possibilities that can be realized by molten salt nuclear technology. Lets hope that someone in the White House or Congress wakes up. The Chinese understand the implications of their venture into Molten Salt nuclear technology. The American leadership does not.

Dr. Furukawa's vision

Dr. Kazio Furukawa is 85 years old, and at an age when most people are content to enjoy a leisurely retirement, he is working hard to change the world. To that end, Dr. Furukawa participated in the founding of a new company, the "International Thorium Energy & Molten-Salt Technology Inc." (IThEMS), earlier this year. Dr. Furukawa is nothing, if not adamant in his views. According to David LeBlanc, at the Recent Thorium Alliance Conference in London, Dr. Furukawa said the same thing to everyone who was not working on a Molten Salt Reactor related project,

I know your heart is in the right place but you must know you are completely wrong so please stop wasting your time!

Dr. Furukawa's interest in Molten Salt Nuclear technology goes back some 30 years, to when he worked with a molten salt medium in an accelerator driven thorium breeding system. Accelorator driven thorium breeding remains a part of Dr. Furukawa's long range thinking. During the early 1980's Dr, Furukawa began to establish contacts with scientists in France andthe old Soviet Union who shared his interest in Molten Salt/thorium technology.

By 1983 scientists at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow were interested in building a Molten Salt Reactor and invited Dr. Furukawa to participate in the project. By 1985 Dr. Furukawa had designed a small-self sustaining molten salt reactor the Fuji reactor concept. The beauty of Fuji was the extent to which it was based on technology already tested in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. Thus Furukawa was able to demonstrate that self sustaining nuclear power was potentially possible without any further technological breakthroughs, or expensive prototype developments.

The full beauty of Dr. Furukawa's project can be grasped once its simplicity, reliability and economy are understood.

Dr. Furukawa must be viewed as a visionary who looks at the big picture. For Dr. Furukawa it is not enough to design nuclear power stations, the entire fuel cycle must be analyzed, and nuclear power systems designed and built to create better fuel cycle efficiency. In doing so, Dr. Furukawa would eliminate the problem of nuclear waste. As early as 1944, Eugene Wigner had favored fluid core homogenioues reactors because of their superior fuel processing potential. Initially homogenious reactors were designed to use heavy water as the carrier fluid, and uranium as either dissolved in the heavy water, or carried along by the flowing liquid in the form of a slurry. An outer liquid blanket in which heavy water carried thorium was used for breeding. However, there were numerous problems with the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor, and a second fluid fueled reactor concept had emerged in Oak Ridge.

In 1947 Oak Ridge scientists and engineers were investigating the possibility of powering a jet bomber with a reactor. The first concept involved the use of a sodium cooled reactor, but Oak Ridge engineers including Ed Bettis thought that the sodium cooled reactor was dangerous, and suggested a reactor which used fluoride salts as a coolant and fuel carrier. During the next 30 years Oak Ridge produced 2 prototype reactors, and completed a great many molten Salt related research projects. All-in-all ORNL spent under $1 billion 2010 dollars, to develop Molten Salt Reactor technology. In contrast the United States Government has spent over $100 billion 2010 dollars on the development of Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors. If anything development of the MSR is further advanced than development of the LMFBR. So much for throwing money at a problem.

Dr Furykawa argues that Th-232-U233 are superior to U-238-Pu-239 breeding systems because they produce little or no trans-nuclear waste,

Dr. Furukawa believes that Fuji costs would be as much as 30% less than the costs of Light Water reactors, and that electricity from the Fuji can be sold for as little as $0.06 per kWh. However, given what I call the full court method of MSR cost containment, it is likely that the cost of a Fuji like reactor can be lowered significantly below Dr. Furukawa's estimate,

Much of Dr. Furukawa's ORNL talk consisted in a recitation of things he had done to bring about the implementation of the Fuji MSR concept. From 1985 onward he kept trying to reach people who might be in position to do something to move MSR technology. This determination does not come from a monitary interest, but a vision, an idea about what the future of energy can and should be. If the thorium breeding MSR concept is thought through to its full implications, the thinker becomes aware that this is a new energy paradigm. A paradigm offers safe nuclear energy that can be free of long term waste, and proliferation dangers. It the same time the Thorium breeding molten salt reactor, the LFTR, offers abundant, low cost energy for the entire human popilation of the earth. Dr. Furukawa sees the Fuji as a boon to humanity, and as his guift to the human race. He is determined that that gift not be wasted.

Dr. Furukawa sees the thorium-MSR paradigm emerging in three stages. In the first stage the Mini-Fuji emerges, to provide a small but useful energy package that can be used to tackel a variety of present and future energy problems including motive power for commercial shipping in a post carbon era. In the second stage a much larger, but still relatively small 200 MWe Fuji emerges. This Fuji can either serve as a stand alone energy/electricity source, or can be clustered. In the third stage a spallation breeder emerges. The spallation approach harnesses neutrons created by a particle accelerator, to the thorium breeding cycle. Dr. Furukawa believes that the thorium can be contained by a molten fluoride salt target, thus the breeding process is directly tied to the Fuji carrier salt/fuel cycle technology.

Dr. Furukawa also offers a three stage vision of the development of the fuel cycle, with Plutonium from weapons stockpiles and from "nuclear waste" being used to start Fuji reactors. In the second stage, as the number of Fujis grow, accelerator driven breeders produce U-233 to start and power the Fujis. In the third phase 20 to 30 chemical processing centers around the world are created to "clean" the apent fuel salts from Fuji Reactors.

By making maximum use of technology first tested by ORNL beteen 1965 and 1969, Dr. Furukawa believes that research and development costs for the Fuji system can be kept extremely low. For example he estimated the cost of R&D for the Mini-Fuji prototype to be no more that $300 million.. He believes that the Mini-Fuji project can be wrapped up in 5 or 6 years. The next stage, which entails the development of the 200 MWe Fuji is expected to cost $1.5 billion, and can be complete by 2020. The development of the accelerator breeder will take 25 years, and Dr. Furukawa believes that it will cost $20 billion. I should note that younger MSR designer developers, such as Dr. LeBlanc and Kirk Sorensen now expect the emergence of MSR breeding technology to come more slowly than they had envisioned 18 months ago. Recent MIT estimates of the global Uranium supply suggest that no Uranium shortages will devlop duruing the next century. Thus even a very large number of MSRs can be operated with from U-235 and P:u-239, without quickly running out of fuel. Still realization of Dr. Furukawa's 10,000 GWe nuclear power starions make a rapid development of some thorium breeding technology very desirable.

The use of Spallation technology in the breeding process is one of the few places where others scientists who are researching MSR technology disagree with Dr. Furukawa. Canadian physicist, and highly regarded MSR designer, Dr. David LeBlanc observed,

I personally agree with 95% of the FUJI approach due to its great simplicity but I disagree with the approach of needing to produce an external makeup of U233, especially by accelerators. I believe though I am having success in convincing more of them that using Low Enriched Uranium with thorium is a more practical and politically acceptable route (the DMSR is basically a denatured FUJI approach).

Dr. Furukawa would argue that Dr. LeBlanc fails to close the fuel cycle, and because he, Dr. Furukawa does, he offers a better solution. The good thing about this disagreement, is that it insures that the Molten Salt reactor community is not going to put all of their eggs in one basket, and indeed one of the things that is most confusing to outsiders, is the large number of baskets
competing for those eggs.

How much energy are we talking about putting in those baskets? Dr. Furukawa spoke of 10,000 1000 MWe energy coming from thorium powered MSRs. By closing the breeding cycle that 10,000 kilos of thorium, about 11,000 tons could power the entire kit and kabootal for the entire globe. if Dr. Furukawa's paradigm were to become a reality, the pessimistic visions of the neo-Malthusians could be put off for millions of years to come.

In his ORNL talk, Dr. Furukawa pointed to several advantages of his MSR-thorium fuel cycle system. They included:

* Safety
* Elimination of long term radioactive nuclear waste
* Nuclear Proliferation resistance
* Economical construction and operation

Dr. Furukawa observed,

Simple is better,

He foresees the emergence of a huge new nuclear industry based on Fuji like technology with quick low cost launches of MSR projects, factory mass production of reactors, and the rapid emergence of a MSR based infrastructure.

In Dr. Furukawa's Thorium MSR paradigm not plutonium production is needed, there will be no core melt down problem, reactors will be small, safe, efficient and economical. Such an energy order is practical, not Utopian, and is implicit in the adoption of a thorium based Molten Salt breeding cycle.