Lowering Nuclear Costs

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

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

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

costs us too much money

seems downright absurd.

The president talked about

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need a National Energy Policy

Despit the pretensions of the White House, and The US Department of Energy, the United States has no energy policy. Even that pillar of the Bush Administration, the National Review Online says so.

In this respect the United States is not much different from other advanced economies. The European Union clims to have an energy policy, but as the right-wing British blog EU Referendum has recently sneered, it is a fantasy policy.

We lack a rational policy mechanism because special interests compete for control of national policy. Oil companies like EXXON and coal companies have invested millions of dollars in creating disinformation campaigns about global warming. Environmentalists engage in disinformation campaigns in favor of efficiency, and "renewable" and against the use of nuclear power. Before we have can have a national energy policy, we have to acknowledge what efficiency, wind and the sun cannot do. We will need to shift reality from myth in the case of nuclear power.

I do not expect to reach that point for several years. The facts are these. Efficiency is no solution because of a problem called Jevon's paradox. William Stanley Jevon a 19th century British economist figured out that as mechanical inventions made the use of coal more efficient, demand for coal went up rather than down. Thus energy efficiency increases demand rather than reduces it. Basically the call to solve our energy problems through energy efficiency is a call to do something that will increase energy demand, rather than reduce it.

Wind and solar power are simply too expensive to provide us with the electricity we need, and they are intermittent. We need a stable source electricity, that does not stop working at night or on hot summer days. But wind and solar generation attract a lot of sentimental attention. It is a highly romantic notion that all the energy we need can be cheaply extracted from the sun and the wind. It is going to take people and politicians a while to realize what a few of us already know. The spread sheets don't work. If you figure the true cost of generating the electricity we need from the sun and the wind, the costs will be too expensive, and we just are not going to get the electricity we need.

Within a few months the United States Geological Service will announce that the United States has been given a gift by God. There is more energy in the ground at Lemhi Pass in Idaho, than there is left in all of the coal mines of the country. But we are not ready for that desperately needed gift. We don;t know how to use it, and most people, including decision makers will not even realize what a gift we have been given.

It is going to take a while for people to figure out that preferred solutions are not going to work. We need an energy policy that will help us transform the thorium found at Lemhi Pass into a form of energy we can all use. A good national energy policy should give us the tools we need, and will point us in a realistic direction.

Two public statements on energy by C.J. Barton, Sr.

Two comments on energy and CO2 by George Parker and C.J. Barton, Sr.

From his retirement from ORNL in1977 onward my father continued to speak out on nuclear power, fossil fuels, CO2, and global warming.  He and George Parker continued to collaborate on statements in support of nuclear power.  They had first called attention to the problem of global warming in 1977, and 18 years later their concerns had grown.  I believe that the 1995 statement, published in the Oak Ridger, was the last public statement they made together.  Below I have also included my fathers last published statement on energy issues to date.  In that statement he called for a National Energy Policy.   He speaks as a scientist, and calls attention to the wastefulness of using oil and natural gas -  nonrenewable natural resources - for energy rather than as feed stock for the petrochemical industry.   My father was 91, when his wrote the last statement, and although almost every voice of his generation had been silenced by time by death or old age, he still spoke out firmly. The same year he also published a statement of opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Nuclear power less damaging to environment than coal
By Charles J. Barton, Sr. and George Parker (The Oak Ridger, 1995)

The protest demonstration at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant and efforts to prevent its starting show that opposition to nuclear power production in this country is alive and flourishing. Even more convincing evidence of anti-nuclear sentiment is that no new U.S. nuclear power plants have been ordered since 1978.

Two aspects of the Watts Bar demon­stration need particular attention: the state­ment of the demonstrators that their aim is to protect the environment and their signs attempting to associate the Watts Bar plant with the Chernobyl disaster.

There are presently 419 operating nu­clear power plants worldwide (108 in the United States). Of these, 330 are light-wa­ter moderated, as is the Watts Bar plant, Many of them have been safely operated for 10 to 20 years. To date, there has been only one major accident in an operating reactor of the light-water type.

The accident at Three Mile Island at­tracted a tremendous amount of TV and newspaper attention. However, the fact that no one exposed to radiation from that, accident received a radiation dose greater than that which the average U.S. citizen receives from natural sources in a year has largely been ignored.

The Chernobyl-type reactor is far from reaching the safety requirements for nucle­ar power plants in this country. In fact, this country and several European nations have offered Ukraine substantial inducements to close power plants of this type because of doubts concerning their safety.

Coal-burning power plants produce about 52 percent of the electricity used in this country. Coal contains a small amount of radioactive materials: 1.3 parts, per mil­'lion,ofuranium and 3.2 ppm of thorium on the average.

Because of the tremendous amount of coal required to produce electricity, 4 mil­lion tons per year for a 1000-megawatt plant, a significant quantity of these natu­rally occurring radioactive materials is dis­tributed to the environment around coal burning plants in fly ash.

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have calculated that people in the vicinity of such plants receive a radia­tion dose from this source about 100 times greater than that which they would receive from a nuclear power plant.

The above-mentioned radiation dose from uranium and thorium in fly ash is of small consequence when compared to the adverse effects of other impurities in coal. Sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxides in coal combustion gases is an important contrib­utor to acid rain. The increasing concen­tration of carbon dioxide in the atmo­sphere (greenhouse effect) is also believed to contribute to global warming.

Unfortunately, health effects of coal combustion products are not nearly as well known as the effect of radioactive materi­als, but studies at the Electric Power Re­search Institute and elsewhere have shown the total health effects of generating elec­tricity with coal are greater than for nucle­ar power plants.

Accidents in coal mines, health effects in mining (black lung) and accidents at railroad crossings are principal contribu­tors to the total health effects of the coal­plant fuel cycle. The health effect of min­ing uranium, principally lung cancer from exposure to radon, is an important contrib­utor to the health effects of the nuclear re­actor fuel cycle.

The information cited above provides evidence that nuclear power plants are less harmful to the environment than coal­burning plants.

This raises the question: Why are peo­ple in groups like Earth First willing to risk being jailed in efforts to, as they view it, protect the environment?

Richard Roberts, an official in the Energy Research and Development Administration, a Department of Energy predecessor agency, stated in 1976 that our country seemed to be swept by a virulent form of "nuclearphobia" exhibited by a disbelief in any encouraging thing that experts in the nuclear energy area might say. There does not seem to have been much improvement in this situation in the last 18 years.

One cause of nuclearphobia is an appar­ent lack of interest on the part of newspa­pers and TV news people in positive news. It seems that anyone can produce an arti­cle saying that something will hurt you, especially radiation, and can get the atten­tion of news people.

Efforts to rebut misinformation seldom get published in newspapers or aired on TV, the only sources of most of the pub­lic's information. Better educated news people should be able to weigh the evi­dence and, at least, present both sides of such arguments.

A large effort has been put forth in this country in recent years to develop new standard nuclear power plant designs.

These plants will be even safer to operate than those presently in use and can proba­bly be built more economically. As aging nuclear power plants are retired and elec­tricity requirements continue to increase, electric utilities will have to choose the technology for future power plants.

In spite of wishful thinking about new power sources such as wind and sun, the choices for large power plants presently are coal and nuclear.

Some countries, notably France, Japan and Great Britain, have already made their choice in favor of nuclear power. France is already producing 75 percent of its elec­tricity in such plants.

Our choice for meeting future electricity needs should be based on facts, not fear.

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Concerns about use of fossil fuels and global warming
By Charles J. Barton, Sr., (The Oak Ridger, 2003)

Hans Blix, outgoing director general of The IAEA published an article entitled Atomic Energy in the 21st Century in the September Issue of Nuclear News, a publication of the American Nuclear Society.

This excellent article considers factors affecting energy policy from the global viewpoint that his position provides..

I will discuss here the pressing need for adopting a national energy policy to guide the expansion of U.S. electrical power production in the 21st century.

First, a little history. In 1975 I attended a Project Independence hear­ing in Philadelphia at the request of Ed Struxness, my boss at the time. This was one of a series of 10 such hearings held at various locations around the country.

Their announced objective was development of a national strategy to reduce the likelihood of a repetition of the scarcity of oil caused by the earlier Arab embargo on oil shipments to the United States. This strategy, if it had been achieved, could have served as a limited na­tional energy policy.

My report to Struxness on the Philadelphia hearing was subtitled "An Axe-Grinders Convention."

Many speakers were scientists es­pousing various energy-producing techniques such as solar and wind power or use of renewable fuels for electricity generation.

These speakers were obviously hoping for funds to further develop their pet projects. Other axe ­grinders were politicians ranging from senators and governors to mayors, with a wide range of objectives.

The results of the Project Inde­pendence hearings were to be sum­marized in a report soon after the hearings were concluded and, pre­sumably, actions to reduce our de­pendence on imported oil were to be undertaken.

Although a number of projects that I heard discussed at the hearing continued to be funded, only the fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - have been widely used for large scale production of electricity.

The principal result of the early 1970's oil shortage was the storage of a large quantity of oil in under­ ground salt mines.

Nothing resembling a national energy policy emerged. Although nuclear power plants produce ap­proximately 20 percent of U.S. electricity, there have been no new orders for nuclear power plants in the United States since 1978;

Blix points out the advantage of nuclear power as compared to use of fossil fuels. He says that, world­wide, the fossil fuels provide about 85 percent of commercial energy, divided as follows: 37 percent for oil, 25% for coal, 21 percent for gas. The balance is divided nearly equally between hydro and nuclear power.

In the United States, coal burning power plants produce more than 50 percent of the electricity used.

One advantage of nuclear power that Blix emphasized is the limited volume of nuclear waste in comparison to coal. He stated that the limited volume of nuclear waste is one of the greatest advantages of nuclear power.

This statement is in contrast to the common belief that nuclear wastes are one of the greatest liabil­ities of nuclear power.

Blix introduced me to the concept of energy density. He says that one kilogram (kg) of firewood pro­duces about one kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity; 1 kg of coal produces about 3 kWh; 1 kg of oil produces about 4 kWh; 1 kg of natural uranium produces about 50,000 kWh; and 1 kg of plutonium produces about 6,000,000 kWh.

The latter figure confirms my be­lief that President Jimmy Carter dealt a major blow to the U.S. nu­clear power industry by eliminating the used fuel reprocessing option.

Although there are significant en­vironmental effects of coal-burning power plants resulting from produc­tion of huge qualities of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and waste, the most worrisome factor ls the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, an effect coal shares with oil, gas and other burnable fuels.

It seems like an argument to limit worldwide production of carbon dioxide will be reached in the near future. The only options for a large scale increase in the production of electricity that do not produce carbon dioxide are nuclear and hydro power.

In most country these are for new dam projects. Blix states: “If the fear of global warming after all were to be unfounded, nothing would have been lost by greater use of nuclear power, as the cost of nuclear power is roughly competitive with fossil fuel alternatives.

Not mentioned in Blix' article but of concern to me as a chemist is the continued use of oil and natural gas for the generation of electricity. These non-renewable resources, particularly Natural gas, could be better used in my opinion for future production of petrochemicals.

I believe that all of the above-mentioned factors and others discussed by Blix need to be carefully examined in preparation for the adoption of a US energy policy, which is long overdue.