Frank Munger gets a "No Comment" response from Y-12

Long time Knoxville journalist, Frank Munger has an exceedingly interesting story titled, Y-12, Libya, Stuxnet, and things that go bump in the night. The story involves the possible testing of the Struxnet virus with Lybian P-1 centrifuge that were shipped to the United States and stored at Y-12 in 2004.Munger has speculated that some of the P-1s were used to test the Struxnet virus, and had enquired to that effect at Y-12. After 5 months Munger received an answer to his question. The answer was, "No Comment."

A response to Peter Lang on Coal and Nuclear Costs

In a discussion of Integral Fast Reactor costs on Brave New Climate, Australian Engineer Peter Lang, a frequent poster/commenter on Brave New Climate has posted a challenge to nuclear power supporters. Lang, who is a AGW skeptic, argues, argues,

If we cannot have nuclear cheaper than coal we should wait until we can. We should not embark on unilateral action to stop climate change. We should not impose a carbon price in Australia.

In response, I argued:

Both IFRs and MSRs are possible with 10 years, provided we are willing to leave out all the bells and whistles and go with existing and proven technology. The resulting reactors will not be breeders, and the number of IFRs (ARC-100) possible is likely to be limited, although the sky is the limit as far as the number of MSRs is concerned.

Is it possible to build these reactors cheaper than coal? There is not enough evidence for ARC-100 type reactors to even hazard a guess, but there is probable cause to believe that SMR MSRs can be produced in factories at a cost that is at least competitive with coal. How is that possible? MSRs can be built with very compact cores, and operate at one atmosphere pressure. That means that they require less material in core and building construction. Secondly MSRs do not require
explosive or flammable materials in their core, thus they also require fewer safety features. MSRs are simpler than LWRs and IFrs, and require fewer parts. MSRs can be air cooled and located entirely underground. Hence many factors which contribute to reactor expenses, cost significantly less with MSRs.

MSRs operate at higher thermal efficiency than either LWRs or IFRs, and greater efficiency plus compact core size are factors in lower reactor costs. MSRs are capable of performing multiple missions, and for some electrical generation missions including load following and electrical back up, lower cost materials can be substituted, for the more expensive materials required by base load MSR power plants.

MSRs are simpler and require fewer parts than IFRs and LWRs. MSRs can be rapidly built in large numbers in factories. Labor saving machines can be employed in factory based MSR construction. Factory workers employed in MSR construction require fewer skills that construction workers who build LWRs. Factory employed workers compute to work from their homes, while LWR construction workers live in temporary housing close to their work site. These factors raise LWR labor costs as well as labor cost associated with coal fired power plants.

In addition, traditional coal fired power have hidden social and environmental costs, including the environmental consequences of acid rain, and the health consequences of breathing polluted coal smoke. The cost of health care related too coal smoke caused illnesses, and the cost to agriculture caused by acid rain caused crop damage is added to the cost of coal generated electricity, that cost rises significantly, and the cost of pollution control equipment adds significantly to the cost of electrical generation from coal fired plants.

All of these considerations support the argument that MSRs are potentially cost competitive with coal fired power plants. This evidence, although not yet conclusive, is sufficiently strong to require further investigation.

Peter's comment are no doubt troubling to IFR backers such as BNC's Barry Brook, and Lang's views on AGW are no doubt wrong headed. Even if Lang were right about AGW, two recent report from Synapse Energy Economics, inc., for the Civil Society Institute document hidden cost associated with coal fired power plants. The Reports are titled Beyond Business as Usual: Investigating a Future Without Coal Power, – Focusing on the Midwestern U.S., and Benefits of Beyond BAU - Human, Social, and Environmental Damages Avoided through the Retirement of the US Coal Fleet. These reports are not without flaws, especially with respect to their attitude toward nuclear power. There comments on water use by thermal power plants also appear to draw highly exaggerated implications. But their observation on the impact of coal fired power plants on human and environmental health appears appears to be sound. Benefits Beyond BAU states,

The external costs of burning coal are real and substantial. The extraordinary social cost of the annual 8,000 – 34,000 premature deaths, when valued by federal standards, imparts a cost on society of $64 to $272 billion; this cost is up to four times as expensive as the cost of electricity from coal.

These estimates are supported by numerous sources, and only refers to coal related fatalities in the United States, the cost of coal related deaths in China runs from a third to a half million a year. Benefits Beyond BAU adds,

It is likely that the cost of investments to adequately address all of the damages from coal combustion would greatly exceed the marginal costs of transitioning to a clean energy economy. A comprehensive re-engineering of the way we use and generate electricity may very well be the most economically prudent choice. For every unit of coal which is phased from the US electricity economy, we avoid both extensive social damages as well as the requirement to remediate those damages through high-cost patchwork environmental controls.

"Benefits Beyond BAU" takes a highly exaggerated view of the social and environmental problems associated with nuclear power, and fails to compare the cost of renewables with the cost of conventional nuclear and alternative nuclear generated power. Were the costs of conventional and alternative nuclear generating sources to receive fair treatment, the cost advantages of reactors, especially MSRs would be obvious. I plan to offer a further review and assessment of the treatment accorded nuclear power by Civil Society Institute documents.

Update:

Peter Lang Responded to me on BNC:

Thank you for your thoughts on what Gen IV might cost and when they could be commercially available.

I have to admit I am very sceptical about what you say.

Firstly, I have asked before on BNC for links to some cost estimates that have been done properly by properly qualified estimators. It appears they have not been done. They cannot be done without proper detailed, final designs.

Secondly, It takes decades to progress a technology from R&D to commercially viable. It took five decades to progress nuclear to where it is now. It takes many years to make slight improvements to gas turbine generators and coal power technologies. It takes decades to make bigger ships.

So my smell test as Barry sometimes calls it, doesn’t accept the times scale or the cost for Gen IV. I can be persuaded to change my mind, but only by properly prepared cost estimates by engineering organisations nd estimators that I would trust to be doing the estimates impartially and competently.

About 5 years ago Ziggy Switkowski said “dont expect to see Gen IV commercially viable before about 2030″. I suspect he is correct.

So, I believe we need to focus on getting acceptance for Gen III (or Gen II if is will have lower LCOE). And we need to focus on the politics of how to win acceptance. For many (perhaps most) that means show us that nuclear can be cheaper than coal."

I responded to Peter,

There are numerous points upon which I would disagree with you. First, although we cannot say withe certainty what Generation UV costs would be, but we do have some evidence. We have identified factors that lead to building expenses for conventional reactors and can determine if those factors are likely to produce higher or lower costs in Generation IV reactors. In the case of the MSR, those factors all seem to point to lower costs. In addition ORNL researchers pointed out a number of MSR cost lowering options, and further cost lowering options have been identified during the last year. Clearly then while not conclusive, the weight of existing evidence seems to be on the side of cost lowering. Critics of the cost lowering argument offer little evidence against ir, thus given the state of evidence the cost lowering argument cannot be dismissed.

Your argument that "It takes decades to progress a technology from R&D to commercially viable." Does it really? First I should note that the Molten Salt Reactor, is mature technology that is past the R&D stage. It is possible to design and build commercial MSRs to day based on technology which ORNL developed, and tested during the successful ORNL MSRE.

Does the historic record require decades for commercial development to reach fruition? The first experimental gasoline powered auto was built in 1889. Between 1890 and 1903 around 2500 gasoline powered autos were built in the United States. By 1910 auto production in the United States had reached 100,000 cars a year, and by 1915 Ford was building 500,000 cars a year.

The first aircraft flight took place in 1903, The second decade of flight (1913 to 1923) saw the manufacture of over 200,000 aircraft.

The first long distance (34 miles) radio broadcast took place in 1897. By 1920 commercial radio broadcasting had begun in the United States, and by 1922 there were over 500 stations in the US making radio broadcasts.

In the case of conventional nuclear technology, the light water reactor was invented about 1945, and by 1950 Alvin Weinberg had proposed to Hyman Rickover that the Navy adopt light Water Reactor powered submarines. The first LWR sub went to sea in 1954, and by 1960 LWR powered subs were in serial production. The first experimental nuclear power plant emerged by 1960, and by 1970, nuclear power plants were in large scale production.

Finally let me address the issue of coal related generation costs. Dammages done by the coal fired electrical generation industry should not be ignored, and while you deny the damages due to AGW, there are other costs which you cannot deny. These are damages to human health in the United States alone coal related illnesses lead to billions of dollars of health insurance claims every year. Illnesses attributed to coal smoke include,

Respiratory Effects: Air pollutants produced by coal combustion act on the respiratory system, contributing to serious health effects including asthma, lung disease and lung cancer, and adversely affect normal lung development in children.

Cardiovascular Effects: Pollutants produced by coal combustion lead to cardiovascular disease, such as arterial occlusion (artery blockages, leading to heart attacks) and infarct formation (tissue death due to oxygen deprivation, leading to permanent heart damage), as well as cardiac arrhythmias and congestive heart failure. Exposure to chronic air pollution over many years increases cardiovascular mortality.

Nervous System Effects: Studies show a correlation between coal-related air pollutants and stroke. Coal pollutants also act on the nervous system to cause loss of intellectual capacity, primarily through mercury. Researchers estimate that between 317,000 and 631,000 children are born in the U.S. each year with blood mercury levels high enough to reduce IQ scores and cause lifelong loss of intelligence.

Coal smoke in China leads to some where between a third and a half million deaths every year. in the UK the number is estimated to be as high as 10,000 annual deaths, while American estimates run from 8000 to 34,000 coal related deaths a year.

in addition to the human health and mortality damage, coal smoke and coal related air pollution damages crops and forrest. The estimated social cost of coal related pollution in the united States is estimated to run between $64 to $272 billion a year.

Even excluding the economic benefits of AGW mitigation, the economic benefits of transitioning from coal to conventional nuclear power would probably outweigh the cost of the transition. In addition to the currently unpaid social cost of coal use in electrical generation, the cost of producing and transporting coal for generation use is quite significant, and is rising. Thus the economic case for transitioning from coal to nuclear is strong.

The Molten-Salt Reactor Demonstration Reactor

Ed Bettis, who was one of the inventors of the Molten Salt Reactor concept, and was a pioneering champion, went on to become lead an ORNL design group during the 1960's and 1970's. Bettis designed both one and two fluid reactors, including a pioneering ORNL two fluid 250 kWe Modular MSR. Bettis also realized that a practical MSR, based on MSRE tested technology and in ORNL-TM-3832 (DESIGN STUDIES OF A MOLTEN-SALT REACTOR DEMONSTRATION PLANT) offered a practical design for such a reactor. The purpose of the Demonstration Reactor project was to

represents a molten-salt reactor plant which is feasible to build, will produce a significant amount of electrical power, and will be a major step toward a useful family of breeder reactors.

The abstract of ORNL-TM-3832 reads

The MSDR, a 350-MW(e) Molten-Salt Reactor Demonstration Reactor, is based on technology much of which was demonstrated by the MSRE. The cylindrical vessel (26 ft diam by 26 ft high) houses a matrix of graphite slabs forming salt passages having 8 volume fraction in the core of 10%. . . In the secondary exchanger, heat is transferred to a stream of Hitec salt (in at 800 F, out a t 1000F). The Hitec oxidizes tritium to tritiated water which is removed and disposed of. The Hitec generates steam at 9OO F, 2400 psi in a boiler, super- heater, and reheater. Electricity is produced a t an overall efficiency of 36.6%. Soluble fission products are removed by discarding the carrier salt every 8 years after recovery of the, uranium by fluorination. Volatile fission products are removed by sparging the fuel salt with helium bubbles in the reactor primary system. The fuel cycle cost was estimated t o 0.7 mill/kWhr for inventory, 0.3 mill/kWhr for replacement, and 0.1 mill/kWhr for processing, giving a total of 1.1 mills/kWhr.

Although ORNL's primary reactor development focus during the early 1970's was on the development of a Molten Salt Breeder Reactor, Bettis suggested:

An alternative approach to the development of a commercial MSBR has also evoked interest. This approach emphasizes more rapid attain- ment of commercial size but more gradual attainment of high performance. The step beyond the MSRE is construction of a 300-MW(e) Molten-Salt Demonstration Reactor(MSDR). The purpose of the MSDR would be to demonstrate the molten-salt reactor concept on a semi-commercial scale while requiring little development of basic technology beyond that demonstrated in the MSRE.

We see from the abstract that many improvements would be possible with the 1972 design. Compared to the MSBR, Bettis and his associates proposed,

First, the MSDR has only such chemical processing as was demonstrated in the
MSRE and has no provision for removing fission product poisons on a short time cycle. Thisresults in a much less complicated chemical processing plant, although it means that the reactor has a breeding ratio less than one and i s therefore a converter. The second major simplification i s that the power density was made low enough for the graphite core to last the 30-year design lifetime of the plant, thus simplifying the reactor vessel and eliminating the equipment for replacing the core.

At the time ORNL MSBR plans called for the periodic removal and replacement of the MSBR Graphite core, as a solution to the problem of core swelling caused by neutron bombardment. This involved design complexities, and so Bettis proposed an alternate scheme to deal with graphite swelling, a scheme that involved core enlargement.

The ORNL-TM-3832 design although interesting is flawed. The MSDR designers, in an effort to solve core a graphite problem increased the amount of core graphite, this in turn increased the size of the core. But a large core increases reactor construction costs. From a cost viewpoint, it is probably better to replace a small core every few years, than to build a very large core, that will last for 30 years.

While ORNL-TM-3832 represents a serious attempt to simplify MSR design, it hardly represents the last word in MSR simplification. While we may appreciate the ingenuity of Bettis' 1972 design, a revolutionary innovation in core design by Dr. David LeBlanc has greatly simplified MSR core concepts. If the MSDR was altered by substituting Dr. LeBlanc's two tube core for the original core design the entire reactor design would require great alteration. The LeBlanc tube core would almost certainly lower MSR costs, compared to all ORNL core designs of the 1960's and 1970's.

Other problematic features of the Demonstration Reactor involved the use of LiF-BeF2 salts. Since the purpose is not producing nuclear fuel in the breeding range, other salts might carry significant advantages including lower costs, and the elimination of the tritium problem. By switching to another salt combination the tritium problem associated with LiF-BeF2 salts. The MSDR included a third heat transfer loop as part of its tritium control system, and that loop decreased thermal efficiency, increased reactor complexity and costs. If the goal of MSR design is breeding, LiF-BeF2 are the preferred carrier salts, but when breeding ceases to be the objective, then the possibility of using other salts comes into play.

The MSDR was designed to generate power through the medium of superheated steam turbines. Gas turbines, and particularly CO2 turbines would be preferable, if available, but they are not an option yet. As it is the use of superheated steam would make the MSDR more efficient than Light Water Reactors.

Thus it would appear that development of the original MSDR design is not warranted, but that development of the design concept could be. Compared to a MSBR (a LFTR), an advanced MSDR would be a design slam dunk, because of the reliance on tested technology and because of the simplicity of the design. Not only would the MSDR cost less to manufacture than LFTRs, it would probably cost significantly less than LWRs and IFR SMRs such as the ARC-100.

In our current energy situation, a MSDR type reactor would be highly desirable. Not only would it serve as a route to a LFTR type molten salt thorium breeders, but it would offer a potential low cost alternative to the Light Water Reactor, that would be both safe, and would reduce the nuclear waste problem.

Alvin Weinberg, the History of Molten Salt Reactors, and the Future of Nuclear Power

This brief Bibliography is derived from Nuclear Green posts on Alvin Weinberg and the history of the Molten Salt Reactor. It is intended to serve as a starting point for researchers, who might wish to investigate the topics in greater depth than I have.

These are essays by Weinberg on the future of Nuclear Power.

The Second Fifty Years of Nuclear Fission

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2007/12/second-fifty-years-of-nuclear-fission.html

Towards an Acceptable Nuclear Future

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/02/towards-acceptable-nuclear-future-alvin.html

Can the Sun Replace Uranium?

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/can-sun-replace-uranium.html

Weinberg on the MSBR

How the Fast Breeder Won the Great Breeder Sweepstake, From Chapter 6, "The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of A Technological Fixer," by Alvin Weinberg.

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-fast-breeder-won-great-breeder.html

The History of the Molten Salt Reactor

A Brief History of the Fluid Fuel Reactor: The Molten Salt Reactor Adventure Begins

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/09/brief-history-of-fluid-fuel-reactor_08.html

A Brief History of the Fluid Fuel Reactor: Bettis and Weinberg

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/09/brief-history-of-fluid-fuel-reactor_09.html

Alvin Weinberg Explains the Molten Salt Breeder

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/12/kirk-sorensen-reposted-this-old-post.html

Rod Adams Competes with Nuclear Green Author for Grumpy Old Man Prize

Rod Adams seems to have decided to compete with me for the Charles Barton Grumpy old man prize. Well part of being a grumpy old man is to get your facts straight, and when Rod gets Grumpy, he forgets to look at the facts.

In a recent comment on Nuclear Green Rod made a number of highly unflattering comments about Kirk Sorensen and myself. For example Rod states,

my issue with the messianic way that both you and Kirk push thorium is that your efforts carry a substantial risk of delaying important and measurable progress in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Wow Kirk and I have pushed thorium in a Messianic way, and we are in danger of impeding progress in the effort to reduce dependency on fossil fuels! Had Rod paid attention to what I have been saying for the last few months he would have known that I am not pushing thorium reactors as short run solution. I have advocated Uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors since last summer. Why? Because we can build them cheap, maybe at half the price of Light Water Reactors, Right now Light Water Reactors are considered too expensive by the market, and if Rod has not noticed investors are not exactly flocking to loan money for their construction. Nor are utilities seemingly willing to take a risk with them. There are hints that Kirk Sorensen may share my interest in practical, low cost uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors. So if Rod were up to date he would accuse me of promoting uranium fueled reactors in a messianic way

Secondly Rod makes the point that

There are way too many people in the US and Europe who think there is a magical way to step from DOS to Windows 7 without going through the intermediate steps or a way to move from a Model-T to a Lexus without countless generations of learning in between.

Granted, i do not disagree with that, In fact I favor beginning molten salt development by commercializing the Molten Salt Reactor technology tested tested by ORNL with the MSRE during the 1960's. No one in the thorium community has disagreed with me.

Rid says,

We know how to produce, fuel and operate light water reactors safely and economically now. Many of us know they are not the ultimate technology, but we also know that prosperous light water reactor owners are far more likely to be interested in investing in the next big fission technology than are people whose money and power comes from combustion technology.

OK Rod Ford know how to build model T Fords too, but that doesn't mean that Ford should not be interested in building more modern cars. There are clearly things that LWRS can't do, for example compete with Natural Gas for the peak power market, or provide the high temperature output required for industrial process heat. If, as Rod's claim, light water reactors were all that economical, why isn't there a rush by utilities to replace their coal fired generating plants with LWRs?

Well lets see, depleted uranium following enrichment contains 0.2% to 0.3% U235, that means that between 28% and 42% of U 235 is lost in the enrichment process. When light water reactors are no longer able to burn nuclear fuel, it still contains 0.7% U.235, which means that you have lost another 23% of the fissionable U-235 from your Light Water Reactor. Now consider the truly terrible thermal efficiency of light water reactors. They operate at no more than 50% of the temperature of MSRs. So about how much more efficient does a light water reactor have to be in order to recover all of the lost energy potential of the uranium that goes into the original enrichment process? Rod brags,

Current reactors obtain roughly 5,000 MW days per tonne of natural uranium - the theoretical maximum is 1,000,000 MW-days per tonne of heavy metal. Where does the other improvement come from?

Rod, as I have demonstrated from amending the inefficiencies of Uranium separation, from rectifying the inefficiency of LWR U-235 use, and from greatly enhanced thermal efficiency.

Rod tells us,

I like the idea of using thorium and have no intention of trying to tell you guys to slow down, but why do you have to try to pull down uranium in your attempt to promote thorium. The enemies burn coal, oil and natural gas and dump their waste products into the environment without much thought at all.

Rod, as you can see, I do advocate a uranium fuel route to the future. in addition uranium fueled Light Water Reactors will be with us for some time to come, but their days are surely numbered by the inefficiencies of their fuel cycle. Uranium breeders could potentially be with us for far longer, but have to be built as fast reactors, which means that the they require 10 times the fissionable fuel LFTRs require. Thus among reactor types, LFTRs can be deployed far more rapidly, and for a span of time that stretches over millions of years.

My expectations of the LFtr are hardly messianic. After large scale LFT deployment, dogs and cats will still fight, men and women will get divorced, teenagers will still be disrespectful to their parents, and a universal era of peace may not begin. We will have abundant low cost land low carbon energy, and that will be an improvement.

Texas Power Blackouts and Green Energy

My brother David was in his Greenville Texas home, talking with me on the telephone when a rolling blackout cut off our conversation. When we resumed the conversation, David mentioned that not only were there rolling power outages all over texas, but that natural gas shortages were popping up around the state. The two problems, I realized, were connected. It should first be noted that Texas power usage on Febuary 2, 2011 was high but far below Texas peak summer electrical use standards. True it was a winter use record. The previous high of 55,878 megawatts was set Jan. 8, 2010. On even of February 2, 2011 a winter peak use record of 56,334 MW was set. The ERCOT had access to sufficient generation capacity and had a deep history of responding to peak winter electrical demand.

ERCOT admitted that

more than 50 power units, capable of generating about 7,000 MW, were out of service.

ERCOT reports focused on larger coal fired power plants

* Luminant's 568-MW Unit 4 at the Sandow coal-fired power plant in Texas shut on February 2 after a feed water flow low suction alarm. The alarm was triggered by a faulty feed water flow transmitter line that froze. Luminant expected the unit to return later on February 2.

* Texas Municipal Power Authority's 470-MW Gibbons Creek coal plant in Texas shut on February 1 after the cold weather stressed many systems, including electronic level indicators and their transmitters. Specifically, the company said the drum liquid level indicators had frozen. TMPA said it was using heaters to unfreeze the affected systems but did not say when the unit would return.

But the average size of the units that had stopped producing electricity, 140 MWs, suggested that they were natural gas burners. And a story in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram pointed to natural gas,

Atmos had curtailed its supply of natural gas to industrial customers, including natural-gas-fired power plants, he said. Atmos did exactly as its protocol called for, he said, to make sure that residential and commercial users had enough gas pressure.

Troy Fraser, The Chairman of the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee, Stated that

We didn't have enough gas pressure available to bring up the power plants, . . . In a high-volume usage, the first ones they cut off are the power plants.

Well that tells the story then. Some coal powered units shut down for reasons that were related to the effect of cold on equipment. Normally their backup would come from natural gas fired generators, but natural gas units were experiencing forced shutdowns too. But what about theTexas supplyb of renewable energy? According to the Lubock Avalanche Journal,

Wind generators apparently do not work as well when it is cold. There were enough areas in Texas on Tuesday where the night was clear and cold and the wind dropped, shutting down generating capacity apparently quite rapidly.

While wind generation of electricity was high during the hours of 5 AM to 7 AM on February 2, wind generator output had dropped by the time the blackout reached my brothers house. In addition the windmills are a long way away from the Texas cities where there were rolling blackouts, and 30% to 35% 0f the wind generated electricity generated was lost during its transmission to those cities. So if wind did not rescue Texas on Tuesday Morning, where did the state find help? According to the Dallas Morning News,

Mexico agreed to transmit 280 megawatts of electricity from the border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Piedras Negras, . . .

So renewables were of little help during the blackout, and natural gas, touted by renewable advocates as the the clean energy solution to the problem of renewable intermittent gaps in the electrical supply, turned out to be another weak link in the generation chain. Hence we had more proof, if we needed it, that renewable energy can't cut the mustard.

Update: Rod Adams has a complimentary post that deals with the role of nuclear power in providing electricity to the ERCOT grid this week. Need less to say the reactors did not let Texas Electrical consumers down.

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Why the Chinese Commitment to the LFTR Matters

I changed the name of Nuclear Green to the Nuclear Green Revolution a couple of years ago. The Name Nuclear Green signified that Molten Salt/Liquid Fluoride Thorium technology had the potential to provide energy in a way that would protect the environment. The LFTR is the environmental reactor. (In fact however, nuclear power is very benign, the LFTR is just more environmentally benign than other forms of nuclear technology.)

The reason I added the word "Revolution" to the name of my blog, was that I believed that the LFTR had revolutionary potential, that it could change the lives of everyone on earth for the better. There is a huge amount of thorium in the earth, and the LFTR is up to 300 times more fuel efficient than conventional nuclear power plants. The LFTR could provide low-cost energy at the level now enjoyed in the United States to everyone on the planet, and provide it for millions of years.

During the last four years, this has all been thought about, argued about, and speculated in the Energy from Thorium Discussion pages. As of this morning, the EfT discussion has drawn over 33,600 comments on nearly 2200 topics, and no doubt those number will continue to grow. Energy from Thorium and Nuclear Green have participated in a campaign to increase public awareness. Both Energy from Thorium's Kirk Sorensen and I come from missionary religious traditions, and we have been spreading the word about thorium and the LFTR. Kirk has been especially vigorous in the use of social media. In addition to his blog, and its adjoining document archive and discussion forum, Kirk has used Facebook, YouTube videos, and Twitter to put his message across. Kirk has been to the United Kingdom twice, and has traveled several times to the Google campus to give presentations.

The consequences of our effort has been a steady increase in public awareness. Other Members of the Energy from Thorium community have reached out as well. Articles have appeared in The (UK) Guardian, The Economist, The (UK) Telegraph, and the Geek oriented, WIRED Magazine. Journal targeting scientists, engineers and technophiles including C&E News, Machine Design, American Scientist, and Mechanical Engineering have all carried thorium/LFTR related stories.

I have concentrated on spreading the word through the blog sphere. In addition to my own blogs, my posts have appeared on The Oil Drum, Daily Kos, The Energy Collective, Energy from Thorium and even the Liberal Zionist blog, Harry's Place. In addition I have posted energy related comments in dozens of other Internet sites.

If there is to be a Nuclear Green Revolution it will have worked from the bottom up, striving to create grassroots support. An energy from Thorium community has grown up, and people like David Le Blanc, Robert Steinhaus, and Robert Hargraves, and many other people have become active communicators about thorium LFTR advantages. Few of us doubt that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a major issue and perhaps the defining issue of this century. Global Climate Change is upon us:

While some hold out hope for a renewables-based approach to mitigation of climate change, critics of renewables point to daunting issues such as high costs and unreliability as lingering problems. Conventional nuclear power, while less expensive and far more reliable than renewable energy sources, is still more expensive than desirable. In addition the world supply of fissionable U-235 is far more limited than the world supply of thorium. A more advanced nuclear approach can transform Thorium into fissionable U-233, lower nuclear energy costs, while facilitating rapid global deployment of safe and clean nuclear power generating units.

The potential promise of thorium and the LFTR technology can rapidly be brought into the effort to prevent further global climate change. China, perhaps more than any other country has realized the importance of energy in increasing the wealth of its citizens, and making life for its people better. At the same time, the Chinese have paid an enormous price for their reliance on fossil fuel technology. As many as 500,000 people die every year from fossil fuel related causes. Global Warming represents another large threat to the well-being of the Chinese people, and although China has made a large commitment to renewable energy sources, the Chinese leadership is aware that renewables cannot produce anything like the amount of energy that the Chinese people need to bring their standard of living to that enjoyed by people living in advanced Industrialized and post-industrial societies. At the same time, the Chinese leadership is far more technologically oriented than the leadership of the United States or Europe.

Thus, the leadership of China is far more open to promising new technology. In addition China has a large thorium supply that comes from its rare earth mines, and so far has not found any use for thorium. The LFTR allows China to kill two birds with a single thorium stone. First it offers a potential source of vast amounts of environmentally clean and safe energy at a low cost, and secondly it allows China to take advantage of an unused resource, which can easily replace coal. LFTR technology has the potential of providing China with abundant energy at a very low cost, and might solidify Chinese economic, cultural and political dominance of the world for a long time to come. This is what the Chinese leadership sees.