The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Paradigm
Posted by Gail the Actuary on January 20, 2009 - 10:05am
This is a guest post by Charles Barton. Charles is a retired counselor who writes the Energy from Thorium blog. His father Dr. Charles Barton, Senior, worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 28 years. He was a reactor chemist, who worked on the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) concept for about 2/3 of his ORNL career. Charles Barton, Junior gained his knowledge of the LFTR concept from his familiarity with his father's work. Neither his father nor Mr. Barton will gain financially from the advancement of this idea.
The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Paradigm
Excitement has recently been rising about the possibility of using thorium as a low-carbon way of generating vast amounts of electricity. The use of thorium as a nuclear fuel was extensively studied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1950 and 1976, but was dropped, because unlike uranium-fueled Light Water Reactors (LWRs), it could not generate weapons' grade plutonium. Research on the possible use of thorium as a nuclear fuel has continued around the world since then. Famed Climate Scientist James Hanson, recently spoke of thorium's great promise in material that he submitted to President Elect Obama:
The Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is a thorium reactor concept that uses a chemically-stable fluoride salt for the medium in which nuclear reactions take place. This fuel form yields flexibility of operation and eliminates the need to fabricate fuel elements. This feature solves most concerns that have prevented thorium from being used in solid-fueled reactors. The fluid fuel in LFTR is also easy to process and to separate useful fission products, both stable and radioactive. LFTR also has the potential to destroy existing nuclear waste.
(The) LFTR(s) operate at low pressure and high temperatures, unlike today’s LWRs. Operation at low pressures alleviates much of the accident risk with LWR. Higher temperatures enable more of the reactor heat to be converted to electricity (50% in LFTR vs 35% in LWR). (The) LFTR (has) the potential to be air-cooled and to use waste heat for desalinating water.
LFTR(s) are 100-300 times more fuel efficient than LWRs. In addition to solving the nuclear waste problem, they can operate for several centuries using only uranium and thorium that has already been mined. Thus they eliminate the criticism that mining for nuclear fuel will use fossil fuels and add to the greenhouse effect.
The Obama campaign, properly in my opinion, opposed the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. Indeed, there is a far more effective way to use the $25 billion collected from utilities over the past 40 years to deal with waste disposal. This fund should be used to develop fast reactors that consume nuclear waste, and thorium reactors to prevent the creation of new long-lived nuclear waste. By law the federal government must take responsibility for existing spent nuclear fuel, so inaction is not an option. Accelerated development of fast and thorium reactors will allow the US to fulfill its obligations to dispose of the nuclear waste, and open up a source of carbon-free energy that can last centuries, even millennia.
It is commonly assumed that 4th generation nuclear power will not be ready before 2030. That is a safe assumption under "business-as-usual”. However, given high priority it is likely that it could be available sooner. It is specious to argue that R&D on 4th generation nuclear power does not deserve support because energy efficiency and renewable energies may be able to satisfy all United States electrical energy needs. Who stands ready to ensure that energy needs of China and India will be entirely met by efficiency and renewables?
_________Development of the first large 4 generation nuclear plants may proceed most rapidly if carried out in China or India (or South Korea, which has a significant R&D program), with the full technical cooperation of the United States and/or Europe. Such cooperation would make it much easier to achieve agreements for reducing greenhouse gases.
Uranium-235 is the only fissionable material that is observed in usable amounts in nature. Thus pioneering nuclear physicist like Enrico Fermi and Eugene Wigner had no other choice of but to use U-235 to create their first chain reaction under the bleachers of the University of Chicago’s unused football field.
But Fermi and Wigner knew early on that once a reactor was built, it was possible to create other fissionable substances with the excess neutrons produced by a U-235 chain reaction. Thus if U-238 absorbed a neutron, it became the unstable U-239, which through a two stage nuclear process was transformed into plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is very fissionable. The physicists also calculated that if thorium-232 was placed inside a reactor and bombarded with neutrons, it would be transformed into U-233. Their calculations also revealed that U-233 was not only fissionable, but had properties that made it in some respects a superior reactor fuel to U-235 and Pu-239.
During World War II, Fermi and Wigner, who were geniuses with active and far ranging minds, collected around themselves a group of brilliant scientists. Fermi, Wigner and their associates began to think about the potential uses of the new energy they were discovering--uses that would improve society rather than destroy it.
The capture of nuclear energy and its transformation into electrical energy became a central focus of discussions among early atomic scientists. They were not sure how long the uranium supply would last, so Fermi proposed that reactors be built that would breed plutonium from U-238. Wigner counted that thorium was several times as plentiful as uranium, and that it could produce an even better nuclear fuel than Pu-239.
The first nuclear era was dominated by uranium technology, a technology that was derived from military applications, and carried with it, rightly or wrongly, the taint of association with nuclear weapons. As it turned out, there was far more uranium available than Fermi or Wigner had originally feared, but other rationales propelled scientific interest in developing thorium fuel cycle reactors. First, Pu-239 was not a good fuel for most reactors. It failed to fission 1/3 of the time when it absorbed a neutron in a conventional Light Water Reactor (LWR). This led to the most difficult part of the problem of nuclear waste. Plutonium made excellent fuel for fast neutron reactors, but the fast neutron reactor that Fermi liked used dangerous liquid sodium as its coolant, and would pose a developmental challenge of enormous proportions.
Advocates of the thorium fuel cycle point to its numerous advantages over the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle. B.D. Kuz’minov, and V.N. Manokhin, of the Russian Federation State Science Centre, Institute of Physics and Power Engineering at Obninsk, write:
Adoption of the thorium fuel cycle would offer the following advantages:
- Increased nuclear fuel resources thanks to the production of 233U from 232Th;
- Significant reduction in demand for the enriched isotope 235U;
- Very low (compared with the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle) production of long-lived radiotoxic wastes, including transuraniums, plutonium and transplutoniums;
- Possibility of accelerating the burnup of plutonium without the need for recycling, i.e. rapid reduction of existing plutonium stocks;
- Higher fuel burnup than in the uranium-plutonium cycle;
- Low excess reactivity of the core with thorium-based fuel, and more favourable temperature and void reactivity coefficients; . . .
Thorium could replace U-238 in conventional LWRs, and could be used to breed new nuclear fuel in specially modified LWRs. This technology was successfully tested in the Shippingport reactor during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
WASH-1097 remains a good source of information on the thorium fuel cycle. In fact, some major recent studies of the thorium fuel cycle rely heavily on WASH-1097. A recent IAEA report on Thorium appears to have been prepared without overt reliance on WASH-1097.
One of the first things physicists discovered about chain reactions was that slowing the neutrons involved in the process down, promoted the chain reaction. Kirk Sorensen discusses slow or thermal neutrons in one of his early posts.
Under low energy neutron conditions, Th232 can be efficiently converted to U233. The conversion process works like this. Th232 absorbs a neutron and emits a beta ray. A neutron switches to being a proton and the atom is transformed into Protactinium 233. After a period averaging a little less than a month, Pa 233 emits a second beta ray and is transformed into U233. U233 is fissionable, and is a very good reactor fuel. When a U233 atom encounters a low energy neutron, chances are 9 out of 10 that it will fission.
Since U233 produces an average of 2.4 neutrons every time it fissions, this means that each neutron that strikes U233 produces an average of 2.16 new neutrons. If you carefully control those neutrons, one neutron will continue the chain reaction. That leaves an average of 1.16 neutrons to generate new fuel.
Unfortunately the fuel generation process cannot work with 100% efficiency. The leftover U-234 that was produced when U-233 absorbed a neutron and did not fission will sometimes absorb another neutron and become U-235. Xenon-135, an isotope that that is often produced after U-233 splits, is far more likely to capture neutrons than U233 or Th232. This makes Xenon-135 a fission poison. Because Xenon in a reactor builds up during a chain reaction, it tends to slow the nuclear process as the chain reaction continues. The presence of Xenon creates a control problem inside a reactor. Xenon also steals neutrons needed for the generation of new fuel.
In conventional reactors that use solid fuel, Xenon is trapped inside the fuel, but in a fluid fuel Xenon is easy to remove because it is what is called a noble gas. A noble gas does not bond chemically with other substances, and can be bubbled out of fluids where it has been trapped. Getting Xenon 135 out of a reactor core makes generating new U233 from Th232 a whole lot easier.
It is possible to bring about 1.08 neutrons into the thorium change process for every U-233 atom that splits. This means that reactors that use a thorium fuel cycle are not going to produce an excess of U-233, but if carefully designed, they can produce enough U233 that burnt U233 can be easily replaced. Thus a well designed thorium cycle reactor will generate its own fuel indefinitely.
Research continues on a thorium cycle LWR fuel that would allow for the breeding of thorium in LWRs. There is however a problem which makes the LWR a less than ideal breeding environment for thorium. Elisabeth Huffer, Hervé Nifenecker, and Sylvain David note:
Fission products are much more efficient in poisoning slow neutron reactors than fast neutron reactors. Thus, to maintain a low doubling time, neutron capture in the fission products and other elements of the structure and coolant have to be minimized.
India has only a small uranium supply, but an enormous thorium reserve. Millions of tons of thorium ore lie on the surface of Indian beaches, waiting to be scooped up by front loaders and hauled away to potential thorium reactors for a song. (For those of you who are interested in the EROEI concept, the EROEI for the recovery of thorium from Indian beaches would be almost unbelievably high, and the energy extracted could power the Indian economy for thousands of years, potentially making India the richest nation in the world.)
India has for 50 years been following a plan to gradually switch from uranium to thorium cycle reactors. That plan is expected to finally come to fruition by the end of the next decade. At that point India will begin the rapid construction of a fleet of thorium fuel cycle reactors.
A commercial business, Thorium Power, Limited, continues research based on the Shippingport Reactor experiment. Thorium Power plans to offer a thorium cycle based nuclear fuel with a starting charge of enriched U-235 for modified LWRs. Thorium Power has sponsored Throium fuel research at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, and a Russian VVER has been used to conduct thorium cycle fuel experiments.
Research on thorium cycle liquid fuel reactors is ongoing world-wide. The best-known effort is being performed in Grenoble, France at the Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie. The Reactor Physics Group there is the only one in the world that has the resources and backing needed to actually develop a fluid core thorium cycle reactor that can be commercialized. In terms of organization size, the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor research group is much smaller than would be required to sustain a full-scale rapid development of thorium cycle reactor technology. The LPSC group thus is working in a business as usual time frame, and has no urgent motivation to do otherwise. After all, 80% of French electricity already comes from nuclear power plants.
Thorium fuel cycle research is also being carried on in the Netherlands, Japan, the Czech Republic. There is also presently a small-scale effort in the United States.
Thorium is extremely abundant in the earth's crust, which appears to contain somewhere around 120 trillion tons of it. In addition to 12% thorium monazite sands, found on Indian beaches and in other places, economically recoverable thorium is found virtually everywhere. For example, large-scale recovery of thorium from granite rocks is economically feasible with a very favorable EROEI. Significant recoverable amounts of thorium are present in mine tailings. These include the tailings of ancient tin mines, rare earth mine tailings, phosphate mine tailings and uranium mine tailings. In addition to the thorium present in mine tailings and in surface monazite sands, burning coal at the average 1000 MWe power plant produces about 13 tons of thorium per year. That thorium is recoverable from the power plant’s waste ash pile.
One ton of thorium will produce nearly 1 GW of electricity for a year in an efficient thorium cycle reactor. Thus current coal energy technology throws away over 10 times the energy it produces as electricity. This is not the result of poor thermodynamic efficiency; it is the result of a failure to recognize and use the energy value of thorium. The amount of thorium present in surface mining coal waste is enormous and would provide all the power human society needs for thousands of years, without resorting to any special mining for thorium, or the use of any other form or energy recovery.
Little attention is paid to the presence of thorium in mine tailings. In fact it would largely be passed over in silence except that radioactive gases from thorium are a health hazard for miners and ore processing workers.
Thorium is present in phosphate fertilizers because fertilizer manufactures do not wish to pay the recovery price prior to distribution. Gypsum present in phosphate tailings is unusable in construction because of the presence of radioactive gasses associated with the thorium that is also present in the gypsum. Finally organic farmers use phosphate tailings to enrich their soil. This has the unfortunate side effect of releasing thorium into surface and subsurface waters, as well as leading to the potential contamination of organic crops with thorium and its various radioactive daughter products. Thus the waste of thorium present in phosphate tailings has environmental consequences.
The world’s real thorium reserve is enormous, but also hugely underestimated. For example the USGS reports that the United States has a thorium reserve of 160,000 tons, with another 300,000 tons of possible thorium reserve. But Alex Gabbard estimates a reserve of over 300,000 tons of recoverable thorium in coal ash associated with power production in the United States alone.
In 1969, WASH-1097 noted a report that had presented to President Johnson that estimated the United States thorium reserve at 3 billion tons that could be recovered for the price of $500 a pound – perhaps $3000 today. Lest this sound like an enormous amount of money to pay for thorium, consider that one pound of thorium contains the energy equivalent of 20 tons of coal, which would sell on the spot market for in mid-January for around $1500. The price of coal has been somewhat depressed by the economic down turn. Last year coal sold on the spot market for as much as $300 a ton, yielding a price for 20 tons of coal of $6000. How long would 3 billion tons last the United States? If all of the energy used in the United States were derived from thorium for the next two million years, there would be still several hundred thousand years of thorium left that could be recovered for the equivalent of $3000 a pound in January 2009 dollars.
Nor would exhausting the USAEC’s 1969 estimated thorium reserve exhaust the American thorium supply. Even at average concentrations in the earth’s rocks, thorium can be recovered with a good EROEI, without making the cost of electricity impossibly expensive.
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Thank you very much for posting this. This is one of the few technologies that I consider to have a strong chance of becoming a true silver bullet. We need the 'alternative' nuclear technologies discussed more often.
I'm looking forward to seeing it debated here.
Or at least a Thorium Bullet
Which has a higher specific mass than silver so should have more impact
;)
..and apparently the only ammo that can kill the Tooth Fairy.. (Kidding, kidding!)
The most promising thing to me about this technology is that it might be a way of relatively safely treating the nuclear waste we have already generated and more that we will inevitably generate from existing reactors. We owe it to any future generations to minimize the destructiveness of that toxic material to what ever degree we can.
But that leads to the inevitable moral hazard--that we will latch onto this technology and pretend that it is ok to go on producing more to such waste.
From a larger perspective, I think it is long since time for all of us, but especially those involved in research and development of energy sources, to think deeply about the consequences and purposes of providing more energy to a species that has proved itself (especially under Western ideologies, but often elsewhere to) to be enormously destructive of other species (driving them to extinction at something like 10,000 times the background rate, destructive of whole ecosystems (dead zones in the seas, rain forests annihilated...) and even destructive of the entire planet's ability to sustain complex life forms.
Can we guarantee that vast new sources of energy supplied to our destructive societies won't be used for further, short-sighted destruction? Will electricity no longer be used to more and more effectively convince people to by lots of consumer products that they don't need? Will this new energy no be used to further over-harvest already-threatened species? To transport, on purpose or by mistake, exotic species into areas that have no means of resisting their depredations? To enable developers to create further sprawling suburbs that gobble up farmlands and habitats?...
If this isn't a moment for general reflection on such issues, I don't know what would be.
Actually the Oak Ridge developers of LFTR technologies were acutely aware of environmental issues and the consequences of bad energy choices. ORNL Director Alvin weinbery was the first scientist to inform Congress of the danger of Anthropogenic Global Warming as a consequence of energy related CO2 emissions. We cannot control the wisdom of people in the future, but if we choose to disempower them because they might make bad choices, don't we make a bade choice ourselves?
+1
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
"Dis-empower" seems to conflate two (at least) meanings of power in this context. The physical power conferred on humanity by projects like this, and the other types of power that are not necessarily directly related to the former--political power, spiritual power, intellectual power...
Perhaps we have not learned anything from our grand experiments with vastly powerful technologies. That would be a pity.
But I think we have learned that humans as they exist today do not use physical power of the sort you offer to supply us very wisely. Indeed, we almost always use it in ways that destroys the richness of life. Given this record, it seems reckless to me to place more such power in our hands, at least until we have matured enough as a species to employ it in less harmful ways (that is until we have become more powerful in the other ways I mentioned).
If you invented the first chainsaw, and you were rightly pleased with your cleverness at doing so, would you hand the first proto-type to a six year old?
If you discovered how to make an atomic bomb, would you hand that technology over to your society, even if it was the society of Nazi Germany?
It is part of the responsibility of those developing such power to consider how it is likely to be used. Or do you think in the above examples the inventor would bear zero responsibility for the consequences of his discovery?
Our disagreement then is the disagreement between the party of hope and the party of that dislikes its own kind. Your Judgement then is not about nuclear technology, but a judgement against the human species.
Irrespective of the philosophical implications of whether man is ready for unconstrained power, I found this to be a very educational and fascinating article. Thankyou.
"dislikes its own kind."
Is someone who refuses to give a live chain saw to an infant someone who hates infants?
You are clearly reacting emotionally and non-rationally to my points. Take a walk in the woods, then come back and maybe we can discuss it further.
And please note that I thought the technology was potentially useful, just for a different main purpose than what you propose.
I find it interesting the way you took what he said and made it into something else. I suggest that you re-read what he actually said. He makes a valid point even if you do not like what he is pointing to.
An excellent article and probably about the most promising alternative energy source that exists today. Failing the development of controlled nuclear fusion, thorium breeder reactors would appear to be almost as good in terms of fuel security and environmental impact. Unfortunately, the more useful an energy source is, the more that it permits the exploitation of other resources and thus damage to the environment. That is after all, exactly what harnessed energy sources are intended to do.
This discussion brings us back to the problem that we live within perpetual growth machine, on a finite land space, with finite material and biological resources. We therefore face the problem that giving human beings a fantastic new energy source, would allow growth based economic systems to reap even more damage on the planet. This is a fundamental problem with any living system that grows within a finite environment. It can either choose to reach a stable state, or it can continue to grow until every resource is consumed and die off like bacteria in petri dish. Unfortunately, a cooperative Power Down or species-wide self-limitation would appear to be impossible in the present global political environment. The only way out of this paradox is for humanity to collectively agree to reduce population size (as China has taken steps towards achieving) and allow continued per capita economic growth. This would allow individual living standards to expand even as total GDP remained static. Gradual progression of technology, the development of compact agricultural systems, car-free cities, integrated waste management, etc, would allow environmental impact to gradually decline. Such a development would require the leadership of a body like the UN.
Ultimately, growth would appear to be an endemic characteristic of all living species and is only held at bay by physical restraint. This does not bode well for a species that is limited to the surface of only one planet. For this reason I think that anyone within post-oil community that still clings to the idea of economic growth or even technological growth for humanity in the future, either hasn't thought the problem through and is relying upon blind hope, or must be a space travel enthusiast.
The thorium electricity is clean for all practical purposes. A clean, abundant power source will enable us to do more with less resources and less pollution.
False. If you study some demographics you'll realize that urbanization and industrialization leads to much reduced nativity. In much of Europe, the population pyramid is inverted. Also, rich countries have all implemented stricter environmental standards, which poorer countries can't afford.
We can argue about the distant future, but for now, growth and tech is the only hope for humanity and the Earth. Without growth and tech, the population increase won't stop at the projected 9-10 billion, environmental standards won't continue to improve, and all available resources will be utilized by increasingly desperate peoples until collapse. The only way to go is forward, and I'm saddened that you and others strive in the opposite direction, putting your hope in authoritarianism and socialism, which have always proved counterproductive in the real world.
"A clean, abundant power source will enable us to do more with less resources and less pollution"
Ever heard of Jevon's Paradox?
"Without growth and tech, the population increase won't stop at the projected 9-10 billion"
How does that make even the slightest amount of sense?
Jevons' Paradox does not apply when resource constraints are present.
Isn't this nothing more than diminishing returns? Jevons' applies to a point, then declining returns begin to dominate?
Cheers
In OECD economies, it looks like the take back principle that Jevon's describes is only 10-50% depending on the sector and the technology used. So, we can expect 90-50% of the gains in energy efficiency to be net gains. There's not a lot of research on the dynamics of this, so it's not clear what the diminishing returns will be after more efficiency gains are achieved. Higher capital costs of the most efficient products as well as saturation effects (macro economic and micro/individual) appear to limit Jevon's Paradox as well. Case studies are rare for such an important subject, though.
You keep saying that.
Do you have any examples?
It sounds illogical.
Resource constraints are always present.
The example is the original context: Coal in the UK.
Coal mining is more efficient than ever in the UK, but the amount produced is lower than it used to be, as there is not that much coal left there. The UK consumes 1/3 as much coal as it did in 1965.
So coal mining became so efficient that it caused UK coal production to decrease?
Crazy.
(And this is because EROI fan Margaret Thatcher closed the coal mines because of those horrible low EROI coalminer/strikers demanded subsidies and the increasing availability of higher EROEI North Sea gas and ability to get higher EROEI coal shipped from Australia and South Africa.)
Jevon's paradox is alive and well.
Well, as I said, the data is quite clear-cut. Take a look at this gapminder graph.
Jeppen,
Have you lost your mind? Sustainable growth is a patent oxymoron and technology is most certainly not energy.
The human resource is a prime economic input. What faster way to deplete the earth's remaining non-renewable resources than to continue the practice of growing economies and populations?
Out of curiosity, what mechanism do you forsee that will force the global population to level off at 9-10 billion? If such a mechanism exists, what would be the negative ramifactions of throwing the switch now? Is 9-10 billion some form of optimum number? If so how was it derived?
Anyone got an idea of the dissipation involved with transitioning virtually all global energy requirements to electricity? Would ramping up all electric power consumption to support 9-10 billion people provide enough dissipation to continue global warming? Just curious.
I didn't say anything about "sustainable growth". I said growth is our only hope, and I mean short-term, say 50-100 years. Please realise that the energy used to create a certain amount of GDP (in constant dollars) has fallen about 25% in the last 15 years. Arguably, growth might not be sustainable forever, but for the next few centuries, it most definitely is.
The mechanism is empowerment and urbanization of women, mostly. Tech, growth and efficient agriculture makes people move into cities, get educations, get careers and so on. That makes birth rates drop like stones.
The negative ramifications of empowering women faster? Well, none, except for the odd conservative backlash, such as the Iran revolution. Please be my guest and fast-track this development.
No, 9-10 billion is not an optimal number. It is what demographers see as the most plausible peak. (Demographic forecast is not as uncertain as one might think. If current social and economic trends continue, this is what we'll get. If economic growth abates considerably, however, population growth will continue.)
Dissipation is not and will never be a cause of significant global warming. It is the trapping of heat that creates global warming, not the antropogenic creation of heat. Our creation of heat will always be insignificant compared to heat from the sun and from the Earth's core.
chitowncarl You have elevated a questionable supposition to the the status of unquestionable truth. Many resources are not in short supply, and can be substituted for resources which are. Recycling can also fill resource gaps. There is enough recoverable thorium to powere the world economy. Long term hlobal warming is unlikely because of Peak oil, Peak natural gas, and peak coal Thus whether yu think that the primary problem is peak fossal fuels, or anthropogenic global warming, the fact is that LFTR technology has the potential to rapidely replace fossil fuels, and to bring abundant energy to a world populatiob of 9 to 10 billion people.
Population growth is very much a function of energy availabilioty. many high energy societies see populations growth stop completely, and even population decline, thus a high energy global economy would be an economy that would not see population exploding.
Charles Barton: Population growth is very much a function of energy availabilioty. many high energy societies see populations growth stop completely, and even population decline, thus a high energy global economy would be an economy that would not see population exploding.
Speaking of questionable suppositions, that is grand one. Would you care to provide historical evidence of this function.
BTW the rates in the Stop Gap graph are misleading as regards gross increase, which is the number the planet and stressed communities feel each and every day, as the percentage rates of increase are now factoring upon such large bases. The 'gains' are also offset by the fact that as wealth might divert effort from reproduction it re-aligns it toward consumption.
Essentially, human behavior all comes down to the socially dominant, and thus re-inforced purpose(s) for living. It used to be family, and hence high birth rates, although only in agrarian societies, especially disenfranchised ones. Now the benchmark is wealth and status at the top end, chaotically desperate struggle at the bottom, and a mix of the two across the middle as people look both up and down from their rung on an increasingly slippery and isolating ladder.
You'll no doubt cite efficiency gains as an offset to consumption increase, but these efficiency measurements are always limited and linear evaluations. Unless people are pinned down and actively stifled each extra one will have considerable impact on the other people and the landscape around them.
Your simplistically confident view of the mechanics and trajectories in play is tragically common in the managerial class. Gaia help us.
If Dohboi, we had a clean unpolluting source of energy then perhaps we would not be removing mountain tops, or strip mining our landscapes for coal or other sources of power.
We think should lessen our impact on other species by not destroying their habitat...and also less auto pollution as well.
I see enormous gains and benefits.
Yes we are destructive. We destroy to get power.
We need to stop such activities and learn to live a more balanced life.
Will turning into savages fighting over a few remaining dregs of fading energy lessen that sceanario?
Airdale-I still watch and read about BLP..hydrinos for Eric Blairs sake....yet promise is shown there in Rowan Univ study and tests of the BLP reactor/whatever....so we seriously need a real breakthru...
As much a doomer as I am I will still root for my children's future.
This is the first GOOD news I have read in many moons.My gratitude to the author of this submission. Thank you Sir.
airdale,
the drawbacks of this technology are not listed in this article, but you can be assured that they are there because every "silver bullet" has had a drawback. Sometimes the drawbacks are so significant that the technological advance turned out to be no advance at all.
Whether it is Nate or Dohboi pointing it out, as long as new technologies are deployed within a mental paradigm that does not recognize the limits of the planet, we will simply destroy the planet faster.
Trains, cars, computers, airplanes, nuclear fission, the Internet: all were supposed to be the magic fix to bring prosperity and peace to the whole world.
Why hasn't world peace and global prosperity occured? Could it be that there is something else guiding how all these technologies are being used?
As far as I can tell, the only way out of this is a transformation of how we relate to and operate on the planet. Since that is unlikely to come in time, the other mechanism will get the job done: exhaustion of our resources until we have left the planet thoroughly denuded and no longer the biologically rich, wonderful one we inherited when we all arrived.
aangel wrote,
The words" the limits of the planet" are rhetorical. Some planetary resources are very limited. Some planetary resources can create environmental problems if they are used extensively. A thorium based energy economy could be sustained for several thousand years with no special mining for thorium. So unless you see extracting an already mined mineral from mine tailings as somehow exceeding the limits of the planet, then availability of thorium would not be a planetary not be anything like a limiting issue for quite along time.
Any nuclear technology will create radioactive byproducts. This is understood. One of the primary advantages of LFTR technology is that it includes a superior system for the management of radioactive byproducts. Superior that is compaired to other nuclear technologies. Depending on the byproduct management system employed the LFTR would either creat a small amount of waste - small that is compared to other forms of nuclear technology - or virtually no waste at all. The LFTR effectively destroys transuranium isotopes, which are alwys seen as the most serious component of nuclear waste. For this reason, scientists in both the United States and Russia have proposed that LFTRs be used as nuclear disarmament tools. LFTRs have some potential to create nuclear weapons material, as all reactors do. But that potential is limited by practical difficulties. It is unlikely that would be nuclear proliferators would chose LFTR technology as a route to nuclear weapons in preference to other well known, less technological challenging, and less expensive pathes to the development of nuclear weapons. Building LFTRs in the United States does not increase the likelihood that Gabon will acquire nuclear weapons.
So there are the challenges of dealing with radioactive materials, although the LFTR carries with it superior tools for the management of radioactive materials. There is also a theoretical use of the LFTR as a proliferation tool, but would be nuclear weapons builders would most likely choose simpler to master and technologically less challenging routs to the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
The LFTR does produce some waste heat, but waste heat can be more efficiently used by increasing LFTR thermal efficiency, or by using LFTR waste heat for space heating, or in sea water desalinization. It is hard to imagine LFTR waste heat exceeding some planitary limit.
The LFTR would occupie a small spacial footprint, Present NRC policy requires a land buffer around nuclear plants. Such buffers become in many instances nature preserves. Thus existing nuclear plants do not make lage environmental intrusions, although it might be argued that this is not the case for uranium mines. But there is no reason to mine thorium for a long time, because lots of it is already above the surface. Thus LFTR technology occuipes little land and much of that will be a virtual nature preserve.
Since one low cost LFTR housing option involves the placement of LFTRs in underground chambers, that would be immune to conventional terrorist attacks, terrorist would likely choose less hardened targets.
Thus the planetary limit argument would appear to be empty of content.
Charles,
I think your defensiveness is making you dense.
That kind of black-and-white rhetoric in response to a thoughtful response is just silly.
FACT: Thus far, every weapon system created has been deployed and used.
FACT: the employment of technology has brought us to the brink of our own destruction.
This shows ZERO ability as a species to manage our impulse control. We are like a child beguiled by balloons, who then pops them just for the fun of the pop.
The point is one we must tackle and must succeed in suppressing. Unlimited power leads to unlimited destruction. The reason lies in your response: arrogance. The arrogance of those who possess power in believing they can contain and control it is massive.
Your response to angel was no better. He, too, was pointing out our uncontrollable appetite. He was *not* talking about thorium, but of the consumption of other resources that unlimited energy would almost certainly, given the above point, allow. I do not think you read angel carefully, but skimmed and jumped to a conclusion.
ccpo, being very tired when i post does lead to writing mistakes. Is it not a matter of black and white thinking already, when someone makes the comment that human judgement is so poor that humanity cannot be trusted with this thechology? i take that resource over use is not a long term problem because ebentually recycling will be the cheapest form of mining. Aangel did raise the resource limitations issue in the context of a discussion of thorium, and although I was aware that he was talking about many other resources as well, It was reasonable to suppose that his observation both included and was directed to a thorium based energy economy. He certainly did not say, thorium excluded for the next few million years.
You accuse me of "black-and-white rhetoric", and then you make black and white statements like "the employment of technology has brought us to the brink of our own destruction". Technology and technological advances have had their dark aspects since the stone age. But it is black and white thinking to emphasize the dark side only. i would not argue that technological advances cannot have their dark side, but I would strongly deny that arguments that we should keep advanced energy technology out of the hands of future civilization because the pose real or imagined dangers. I favor handing the future options and tools that might solve some of their problems, and trusting a future society to choose its tools wisely. I dislagree with the argument that people are never capable of making wise choices.
FACT: it is extremely difficult to use LFTR technology to make weapons, and it has few of the drawbacks of e.g. climate change and toxic emissions associated with fossil fuels. It appears that both your objections 1 and 2 are ill-supported.
That's true. To be fully disclosing, we'd have to admit that the neptunium at the end of the fission chain might be used for weapons, and there's a reason for getting it out of the reactor as it improves the neutron efficiency (although it could also be left in to fission off).
Of course there are far easier paths to making a nuclear weapon. Countries that we're worried about getting nuclear weapons also use a very small percentage of global primary energy needs (Iran for example doesn't use a lot of electricity, so the reasons for Ahmedinnejad's nuclear program are clearly not much about electric power).
For an apparently intelligent man, and judging by your handle a self-considered Renaissance Man, you make some blindingly simple errors.
Re-read. The context of my comment has zero to do with thorium as a weapon fuel or with thorium reactors being an inherent problem.
Cheers
The response was to E-P, not to you.
And my response was not to you. Check the threading.
Ah I see that. But I actually do think you have a point, at least partially, since it's possible to make weapons through neptunium from LFTRs.
If I understand correctly,in LFTRs we can develop a fancier reprocessing in order to eliminate even Np and heavier elements, until Am or Cm, with no criticality constraints. This is particularly important if you feed at least the first reactors with a plutonium-transuranics fissile start-up
That doesn't make sense to me at all. Reprocessing doesn't eliminate Np - indeed that's the problem, it gets it out of the reactor. Np can be left in the reactor to fission off by excess neutrons, but it would be more efficient, from a reactor operating perspective, to get it out. The difference may be small, however.
Perhaps you mean this new reprocessing scheme contaminates the Np (with what?), rendering it useless?
Bear in mind that a LFTR has a miniature reprocessing plant working on line. With a fancier reprocessing you can put back into the reactor Np and heavier elements in order to trasmutate them to plutonium 239 and other fissile elements, at this point all elements eventually can be fissioned
IIRC, the "reprocessing" for LFTR is limited to:
There appear to be no steps that could effectively separate Np from Pu and Am (I'll take enlightenment from anyone with better knowledge).
Neptunium is just as easily removed by fluorination, and then it shouldn't be too difficult to do the separation by centrifuges since we're talking about a gaseous substance (although there may be other principles that could be used).
Engineer-Poet
As I understand it, the extraction of Neptunium-237 from core salts does not pose a major challenge, the rationality for doing so is that neptunium-237 is a neutron poison, and allowing it to stay in the reactor would lead into the problem of transuranium isotopes. Stripping it our leads to a proliferation issue. I regard neptunium to be potentially a far bigger proliferation issue than the extraction of u-233 from core salts. However, I also regard the Neptunium-237 problem to be solvable, by limiting LFTR sales to countries that already possess nuclear weapons, and countries that can be counted on to protect nuclear materials.
Yes, I am fully aware of that, and this is what the US would probably want to do. The problem is there's an economics 'excuse' if you will, to remove Np from the reactor as it is a neutron poison and getting it out is relatively easy (as you probably know from discussions on the thorium blog forums). So I understand the critique that this could eventually give some proliferation risk.
How can we trust the nuclear engineers and thorium reactor designers to make proliferation security their top design tradeoff priority?
They will be sorely tempted to remove pa-233 from the reactor blanket to facilitate reactor criticality. To be clear, the proliferation resistance of the thorium fuel cycle in the Lftr depends very much upon the details of how it is implemented.
In detail, on the one hand, hard gamma radiation from U-232 makes the U-233 from high burnup U-233-thorium fuel cycles more of a radiation hazard than plutonium.
On the other hand, because of its low rate of spontaneous-neutron emission, U-233 can, unlike plutonium, be used in simple “gun-type” fission-weapon designs without significant danger of the yield being reduced by premature initiation of the fission chain reaction.
In the case of the molten-salt U-233 breeder reactor, it is proposed to have continual chemical processing of a stream of liquid fuel in both the core and the blanket. Such blanket salt reprocessing arrangement offers a way to completely bypass the U-232 contamination feature because 27-day half-life Pa-233 could be separated out before it decays into U-233. Such production of pure Pa-233 must be avoided.
In any case, no fuel cycle involving the separation and recycle of U-233 would approach the proliferation resistance of unreprocessed U232/U233 core salt fuel mixes from which the radiation dose rate is on the order of one thousand rem per hour at one meter for decades after formulation.
The design of the Lftr must keep mixtures of U232 to U233 on the order of 5% to 10%. For proliferators, survival after such high radiation exposures is on the order of one to two days. However, the useful bomb fabrication working time of proliferators before incapacitation is on the order of only an hour or two.
Note, my proliferation safety criteria are higher than the lAEA criterion for nuclear fuel self-protection of lOO-rem per hour at 1 meter.
In deployments to countries where security cannot be guarantied such as the Philippines, Cambodia, or Vietnam, to guaranty that U-233 cannot be chemically separated from U232; the Lftr cannot be constructed with a blanket that surrounds the core.
In deployments to the first world, blankets may be permissible. It is in this blanket that Pa-233 is created and from which pure U-233 can be separated. If external reactor security cannot be absolutely guarantied, the blanket must be excluded. This will make the Lftr failsafe.
Chemical core salt reprocessing cannot isotopically separate U232 from U233.
It is important to note that any source of thermal neutrons can be subverted to produce pure U233 from thorium. This includes fusion, proton accelerators, and other reactor types including heavy-water reactors.
They can't divert significant amounts of Pa233 or U233, because then they run out of neutrons. As you noted, if they have a source of neutrons, then they don't need the reactor.
Since NO ONE has ever diverted U233 for bombmaking because it's so radioactive, so hot, so easy to detect, why would "they" use a LFTR for this purpose? Its so much easier to simply use an off-the-grid research reactor to create plutonium (as...Israel, Pakistan, North Korea have done). It is how Argentina, Libya, Brazil were *going* to make WMD. The LFTR is bascially proliferation resistance enough to discourage people from using it for U233...especially as ever LFTR made will be watched.
It is a specious argument, IMO.
David
Can it be that proliferators have no imagination or maybe they have bought their bomb making plutonium technology from AQ Khan?
Imo, The U233 bomb is a gun type device which is far easier for a terrorist to build than a plutonium bomb.
It’s the U232 mixed in the U233 that makes “it's so radioactive, so hot, so easy to detect”. Why do you insist on pure U233; that is a dangerous and foolish idea. My post lays out a path for a safe Lftr. Don’t you agree with it?
A rogue state is easy to deal with compared to terrorist because such a state can be deterred by the treat of destruction. A terrorist is not deterred by the treat of destruction.
Watching depends on people. People can fail. Such failure is catastrophic. Isotopic denaturing is passive and endures for all times and cannot fail. Why don’t you agree with it?
janap128 no nuclear technology is proliferation proof, but nuclear technologies are and can be proliferation resistant. This is the case for the LFTR. Rogue states choosing to build nuclear weapons would most likely choose the shortest, lowest cost and least technological rounts to nuclear proliferation over more challenging, and expensive routs. Since it is possible to produce weapons grade plutonium from natural uranium using graphite pile reactors, at a fairly low cost, the possession ofLFTR technology is unlikely to increase the probaboility that rogue states will build nuclear weapons. In the case of stats that aew deamed untrustworthy, the Pebble bed reactor his highly proliferation resistant, and would be an acceptable energy alternative.
Charles Barton, I am not concerned with rogue states. They have been controlled by the world for some time and have not yet acted in an irrational manor. On the other hand, terrorism is not controlled and is highly dangerous since terrorism is highly irrational and suicidal.
Terrorists cannot be allowed to get their hands on pure U233. If Lftr designers insist on producing pure U233, then the Lftr cannot under any circumstances be deployed in “states that are deemed untrustworthy” because of possible subversion by terrorists. That is most third world states including Pakistan and India.
I agree that the deep burn Pebble bed reactor is highly proliferation resistant, and would be an acceptable third world nuclear energy alternative to an Lftr using pure U233.
To be clear, Lftr using pure U233 can only be deployed in the US, UK, France, etc. But an Lftr using isotopically denatured U233 can be deployed anywhere in the third world.
Why can’t the Lftr internal design be centered on denatured U233? It seems like such a simple but absolutely essential safeguard to implement. Especially since such denaturing is an IAEA requirement through isotopic mixing for U235(20%) as well as U233(12%).
I'd be interested in seeing your proposal for generating sufficient denatured U-233 to supply unreliable nations. Or are you suggesting that only for the initial fuel load, and relying on a breeding ratio roughly equal to 1 to keep their systems running without any extraction of fissionables or protactinium required?
Obviously, denatured U233 can come from the blankets of Lftr breeders in the first world: US, UK, France, etc.
Yes, but how much? I didn't ask you if the material would be available, I asked you if it would be sufficient.
I seem to recall the potential breeding ratio of 1.09:1 for thorium. If the first world runs at 1:1, the third world would be limited to about 9% of the power of the first world. Do you think they'd settle for that?
I have noticed that the advocates of any energy technology never discuss its week points; so to with the Lftr. You’re getting close to understanding the Lftr dilemma.
The safer that the thorium fuel cycle is made through denaturizing the blanket salts with U232, the lower the maximum potential breeding ratio becomes. Removing PA-233 on a three day rotation gets the ultimate max breeding ratio to 1.09:1. The longer the removal frequency and/or the more denaturing that is done the more the breeding ratio drops. If we want a fail safe thorium fuel cycle, the breeding ratio may drop to under 1:1, that is, the reactor becomes subcritical and needs supplemental neutrons to stay alive.
There is a powerful temptation for the Lftr reactor designer to tradeoff proliferation resistance against breeding ratio to where the Lftr might become proliferation dangerous. But more neutrons can be added to the core by a periodic addition of enriched U235 light water reactor fuel to keep the reactor critical, but that costs an additional million or two dollars a year for operating expenses based on the size of the reactor.
I think that it is better to add other neutron producing technologies to a subcritical Lftr core reaction to form a fail-safe hybrid reactor. This will greatly clean the Lftr waste stream to the radiation level of coal ash in only a few hundred years. Adding additional enriched U235 extends the reactor waste cool down period to about 1000 years.
Human based security such as hot boxes and guards to make pure U233 safe will only be secure in the first world. The third world will just need to use windmills and solar panels, TRISO nuclear fuel, and coal. This is one of the unfortunate costs and consequences of terrorism.
But there is always a danger that a ‘no nothing’ politician may export this reactor type using pure U233 to the third world without appreciating the terrorist danger that is involved in his decision. To be very safe, an Lftr design that is failsafe in any situation and during any time in its long 100 year lifespan is what I would like to see happen. The engineers say perfect is the enemy of “good enough” but not for me.
janap128 You seem obcessed with prolifferation with a reactor that will most certainly be bought by nuclear powers, or by nations that coould easily become nuclear powers without LFTR technology. The point is not to build a proliferation proof reactor, but to sell the reactor to countries who are unlikely to use it for proliferation either because they possess nuclear weapons or because they they have signed an agreement to not do so, and have demonstrated a willingness to abide by that agreement. The United States has no motivation to use LFTrs to produce weapons grade materials, bercause it has a large surplus of U-235 in storck. Nore does likely customers, for exampleindia is building a fleer of LMFBRs which are much better proliferation tools. Ditto for Russis, China and Japan. France already has built two LMFBRs and coud build more if needed. These would be some of the prime customers for LFTR technology. How would selling LFTRs to these countries increase the risk of nuclear proliferation? The French are working on their own LFTR design, and unless they drop the project they will probably hbe producing them about 2030. So how are you going to stop france from selling LFTR to whom ever they choose?
We have seen from the operation of pakistani and South African proliferation efforts that proliferation is pervented by political obsticales, not by trying to control technology. You fall into the trap of trying to control the future, rathe4r than working toward international institutions and treaties that will control proliferation. What will stop an americaqnm politician from selling LFTRs to unreliable 3rd world countries, not to mention unreliable French politicians, indian politicians, russian politicians and Chinese politicians is an international treaty that they not do so.
Mankind is not universally directed by the better angels of our nature. It is prudent to rely on the unchanging constraints of physical laws and universal processes rather than the promises of leaders or international institutions or treaties between nations. These devices of man can change, be repealed, rejected, or ignored for the most mundane reasons. When the universal and unchanging processes of the universe are within our reach to protect and advance mankind, let us take full advantage.
True, nations can be controlled by either reason or by fear. But those who use terrorism to advance their agenda are not so controlled. We cannot permit the slightest possibility, take nothing for granted, leave no stone unturned, that such a potent power for good be subverted and delivered into the hands of suicidal madmen that are intent on the destruction of our civilization.
In this line of thought, we really shouldn't build dams either, since you can blow them up with diverted fertilizer. Hey, maybe we shouldn't use fertilizer either. Life is risk, and you just need to prioritize.
Any statement that begins with the sexist word ::mabnkind" is going to be a sweeping generality that is unsupported by fact. Do you believe that you know better what is good for "Mankind" than your feelows do? But this hadly justifies your anouncing a standard that if 5 times higher than the current international standard with only sweeping philosophical generalities to back you up.
Ok, let me restate the proposition in the most base and common terms. I will discard sweeping generality that is unsupported by fact. It is a matter of base emotion: hate.
IMO, terrorists are no better than roaches or rats and need to be dispatched as fast as possible, especially those who are planning to take out a city. In that light, I am lobbying for a better and faster insecticide. You and the IAEA just don’t hate enough; soft on terrorism.
By the way, for a 5% mix, the kill probability is an order of magnitude more than you support.
If you hate terrorists so much you'd want us to stop buying oil from them as quickly as possible.
But that doesn't seem to be your goal.
Why is that?
The Shippingport reactor ran a breeding ratio > 1.0 despite having no Pa-233 removal and the handicap of light-water coolant absorbing some neutrons, so this seems rather unlikely. Besides, the only need is to keep the reactor critical for its design lifespan; this might be achieved by e.g. re-arrangement of core reflector elements as the reactivity drops.
This introduces two major problems you didn't have before:
Half-baked fixes won't get you too far.
This is very good news; so why is there so much resistance to U232/U233 isotopic mixing?
I fear there is a definite need for “Half-baked fixes”.
There is less than a ton of U233 in the world right now so something must be used to breed U233. I favor neutron sources other than U-235/U238 for the reasons you list.
U233 breeding must be done only in the US, UK …etc; not third world countries.
The IAEA most definitely will regulate these breeders.
There are disadvabtages to denaturing LFTR core salts, It would be harder to breed using a denatured LFTR, and you would be be creating a transuranium problem that wuld be better to avoid if possible. LFTR core salts would be contained in a highly radioactive hot cell. Terrorists wishing to enter the hot cell probably would not live long enough to extract core salts. Security arrangements should make it unlikely that terrorists even enter the hot cell.
It’s a neutron economy problem then, which basically boils down to cost. In terms of cost, it does not make much sense to send 10 billon dollars to scan large numbers of cargo containers at all the ports of entry in the first world for nuclear bombs from terrorist, when a few extra dollars spent at the production point of the nuclear material will absolutely guarantee nuclear security.
Look around for some extra neutrons from more enriched core fuel, or from lasers, or from proton accelerators, or from fusion so that you can breed failsafe U232/U233. Or the Lftr designers may need to do some additional design work.
A transuranium problem( lots of plutonium in the waste) only comes from using U238 as a denaturant. 5% U232 mix won’t cause any transuranium problems.
I am concerned about out and out bribery, Pakistani or Saudi reactor operators simpatico to terrorists, or doing favors, threats to reactor operators or their family members, or fatwa’s requiring reactor personnel to provide U233 to their imams; the possibilities are endless and cannot all be foreseen let alone countered.
In short, the human flesh and spirit are weak and the terrorists are ingenious, but isotopic denaturing can only be defeated by using an easily detectable two billon dollar isotope separation plant that terrorists can’t afford, can be seen from space, and has a well policed and easily subvertable supply chain: i.e. Iran.
Janap128, Would a 1 to 20 U-238 to U-233 ratio really prevent weaponization of core uranium? Should LFTR's be sold to countries which cannot be trusted to protect core salts? Could diversion be prevented by limiting LFTRs sold to unreliable countries to one to one conversion ratios? Would terrorists have access to chemical processing facilities required to extract U-233 from fluoride salts? It seems to me that LFTR design should be undertaken first for the American energy market and for the energy markets of other nuclear powers, as well as countries which have proven track records of protecting nuclear technology from diversion. Pebble bed reactor technology should be the preferred technology for countries where there are concerns about diversion.
The IAEA rule is 12% (1 to 8) for U238 dilution. The IAEA rules for U232 denaturing is about 1 % (1 to 100), but for me, please make it (1 in 20).
No…… But back in May of 2008, G. W. Bush tried to trade Saudi Arabia nuclear plants for Oil. Realize, you can never tell what these politicians will do!
Any breeding ratio is acceptable if the denaturing of U232 to U233 is 5%. It’s up to the engineers to make it happen.
We must absolutely prevent terrorist access to pure U-233, no matter how it is implemented; better that pure U233 is never created; IMHO, the only failsafe way.
How can we stop politicians like G. W. Bush from doing crazy and dangerous things? It is better to make the Lftr idiot (...politician...) proof from the beginning.
janap128 what qualifies you to judge that the IAEA's U-232 denaturing rule is inade4quate. You views seem close to those of Jung min Kang and Frank von Hippel who appear to be unaware of the difficulty of extracting protactinium from liquid fluoride salts. But even Jung min Kang and Frank von Hippel that a 1% 232 content would produce a dose rate of 127 per hour, and thus is not fatal quick enough to suite you/
My father researched the problem for a number of years, and a complete protactinium cycle every 27 days might not be possible for a single fluid reactor. In a two fluid LFTR a 27 day cycle would not be necessicary. The Indians, at any rate plan to breed thorium in heavy water reactors, and it would appear that they are about to enter into an agreement with AECL which would likely lead to a technology transfer. You are perhaps aware that breeding thorium in heavy water reactors is an effective way to avoid producing U-232. Thus proliferation via thorium breeding will have to be controlled by an international effort, not by opposing LFTR R&D, or so denaturing the U-233 that it becomes effective breeding becomes impossible.
The heavy tampers used in less sophisticated U233 weapon designs typical of possible terrorist bomb efforts can provide much high levels of gamma attenuation - a factor of 100 or even 1000 over a modern light weight design with absorption that would be unlikely to achieve more than a factor of 10 attenuations.
The U-232 gammas also provide a distinctive signature that can be used to detect and track the U233 weapons from a distance. But, current bomb detectors are just retreaded industrial equipment. This crude bomb detection equipment currently deployed at ports around the world might not detect such a well shielded U233 weapon.
Until the sophistication levels of these port radiation detectors are increased, it is prudent to add an increased safety factor onto the standard U232 denature specification, IMO.
This disagreement may be academic since in an Lftr reactor where the fuel is reprocessed and recycled, the U-232 level could build up to 1000 - 2000 ppm (0.1 - 0.2%). In a system that is specifically engineered to maximize the U-232 fuel mixtures, concentration levels in the range of between 0.5 - 1.0% can be reached. However, I hope that some very good engineer can do more.
By the way, I am not opposed to Lftr R+D. I am opposed to any system that is engineered to produce pure U233.
Engineering a LFTr to produce pure U-233 seems unlikely. Engineering sa CANDU type reactor to do it seems much more a possibility And the Indians are very skittish about having their nuclear workers exposed to even nominal ammounts of radiation. 1% U-232 is the international standard, and its seems reasonable since many skilled workers would have to be sacrificed to build a U-233 bomb. Provided, and thei is very implausible terrorists could get a hold of the U-233 in the first place. My bet is that terrorists would find easier ways to carry out mass destruction.
There's really much bigger things to worry about. If a country wants weapons, they'll get them without being sneaky with a power reactor. You could easily make weapons with CANDU's, but no one does because its not a very economic choice.
So if I paraphrase your original objection:
"Things humans do create problems that can leave us f***ed, so even if we do our best to make technologies that don't create any serious problems, we're still f***ed."
You will excuse me if I don't find this either logically convincing or philosophically interesting.
We need calm, well reasoned arguments. This discussion is not going in the right direction.
I will delete whole threads, if need be. I suggest not discussing this further.
In fairness, you should have deleted both if you were going to delete at all. It was not I who was incorrect, after all. Leaving his there leaves an incorrect impression.
C'est la vie.
Cheers
Why do we need calm reasoned arguments?
The world doesn't work by reasoned arguments, it works at an emotional level, covered over by reasoning.
If someone believes in God, should scientists discount them, theirs no rational arguments for God.
Sometimes it is useful to acknowledge discontent.
Sunnata - That is a sublime understanding that is completely invisible to most technicians.
Until humanity honestly and sincerely grasps the nature and beauty of its own irrationality it will continue to plunge into waters too extreme for it optimal health and survival.
Currently only the media and and advertising sectors have their hands openly on the tiller, and they plot humanity's course in accord with the highest bidder. Science and its devotees seem entirely oblivious to this reality.
Put a better mousetrap in a brothel run by knaves and it is still a brothel run by knaves. Renovation is a metaphysical question, not a technical one.
This brothel is run by volunteers not knaves, and we only have so much time to spend and would rather not spend it babysitting. We have kept the forum open and free for almost 4 years and that format has many advantages. All Gail meant was to keep things civil. Disagreements, with facts and counterpoints, are part of the process. Opinions are welcomed too, if stated as such, logical and polite.
Nate
I appreciate your sentiment, but it seems you've taken the observations made by myself and Sunnata far too narrowly. They variously, and I thought quite obviously, refer to the breadth of global circumstance and not singularly to this forum, although it is very pertinent to this topic.
It is a popular notion amongst self-consciously rational people that emotion should play no part in a serious discussion. In reality this is an irrational belief. Emotion is indivisible from anything that anyone ever does or thinks. It governs what people see and do not see, and thus determines the quality and range of inputs that they have to process through their prized rationality.
What varies greatly in today's world is the degree to which people don't recognise and/or mask the expression of their emotional drivers. Thus considerations, processes, values, etc., can appear 'scientific' whilst being loaded with emotional color.
Sunnata made useful observation of this important but rarely acknowledged truth. I thought it worth applauding and expanding upon.
I agree the overhead created by unruliness or irrelevancy is a demanding issue. Where to draw the line is not an easy decision. Too quickly can censor important and enlightening expression that only threatens some people's sense of order rather than orderliness per se.
The problem of a new energy source feeding accelerated environmental destruction, has more to do with what human beings will DO WITH THE ENERGY, rather than the nature of the energy source itself.
For example, even if petroleum had turned out to be a clean, healthy fuel, with zero emissions and available domestically in almost unlimited supply in every nation, it would still have given us the problem of urban sprawl, mass-production farming, mass urbanization, mining and waste, deforestation, etc, and all of the terrible environmental destruction that these activities brought with them, simply as a result of the power that it gives us over our environment and our inability to sensibly limit and control our aspirations. The cheaper, the cleaner, the more available and more applicable the energy source is, the more it will tend to feed these sorts of problems.
When a growth based society is trapped within a finite environment, even its greatest successes begin to look like failures.
Antius....: I heat my home with natural gas, I cook my food with NG; heat my hot water and dry my closes. That call ALL be switched to electricity. I could power my car if I had a plug in hybrid or all electric "EV".
My wifes school, already energy 'efficient' could be powered by LFTR electricity. But that is standard.
Here are other "ideas". If LFTRs really provided the basis for "Thorium Economy", that is more electricity produced cleaner and cheaper than the way it is now, we can eliminate potentially huge invirornmental threat: mercury in billions of CFL. That is correct: get rid of them and go back to resistance lighting. Only kidding, I'm not really proposing that, but it's something to think about since the ONLY reason we've filled up our rooms with mercury containing light bulbs is cost of electricity and efficiency. It's all relative, don't you see?
But with massive amounts of electricity and process heat, we could end the use of 'coke' in industry (steel, chemicals), we can try high-energy applications in the chemical industry to create new materials. We can have a *serious* world wide desalination program that could provide potable water to dry regions and save our rivers and streams.
That's few ideas!
DAvid
David, you didn't respond to his point. Not only that, but you changed the topic. I haven't seen any of the three of you respond to this point yet, though it has been raised by at least three people.
Cheers
Agreed. The main point is not being addressed.
However, Brian Czech from the Center for the Advancement of a the Steady State Economy has:
Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All.
OK, let me block quote it here to refer to it:
I simply don't agree. We are trying to survive, and, live healthy and long lives. It is pretty much fact that the more energy you have access to, the more long lived you are, as a society. But I disagree with the premise, it is EXACTLY wars of energy and the pollution (particulate, chemical and CO2) that IS destroying this planet. That is the whole focus of this discussion.
Not if what we do is regulated. It's a question, ultimately, of politics and policy. Portland, OR, limited it's urban sprawl. European farming practices are simply *better* than American ones. Building mass transit cuts down on how much and how we use energy, cheaper, more abundant power produced locally implies less wars for energy. It allows for BETTER and more wide spread recycling, for example. The above quote is a prescription, again, for *poverty*. We have a huge difference in our views of human potential and the direction we think society needs to go.
Then we have to make this 'finite' (I don't actually agree here since we are talking philosophical differences) environment BETTER and more livable, not less, and you need more and more clean, cheap energy to do that. The LFTR points to this in the future, out beyond 2050 when we develop the Thorium Economy. This includes escaping this planetary environment to the rest of the solar system.
David
To have worldwide regulation enacted would require that we have sufficient people who have personally transformed their relationship to our place on the planet and the 'infinite growth' camp would have to be outvoted.
Good luck with that. I have been working on that for years, to very, very limited success. In fact, in all honesty I would have to conclude that my efforts have been a complete failure when viewed against what needed to be accomplished before time ran out.
DWalters: Portland, OR, limited it's urban sprawl.
Update yourself with a closer view of the latest results of that 'success'.
All sorts of bottleneck problems are becoming manifest due to the fact that squashing 1st World consumers closer together does not limit their footprint.
Smart Growth is a dumb fallacy designed to keep intelligent revue away from an impossible aspiration that is concomitant with unconscionable profit-taking.
And bloated consumption footprint is not just a burden on the robbed. It presents a deadly vulnerability within the physical security of the bloated.
dwalters: We can have a *serious* world wide desalination program that could provide potable water to dry regions and save our rivers and streams.
Arguably we could but without an unprecedented variation within current standards the water would be allocated to increased production and population.
Please tell me where and how it has been otherwise or tell me exactly how it might be otherwise?
I see. So, we condemn the world to continued poverty because you are *afraid* of growth. This is reactionary. It needs to be opposed. Humanity comes first, and to bring the majority of the worlds population out of poverty will require a lot more energy than we use and produce now. Your question is false. It is NOT otherwise...more water, more growth, and...BETTER growth...which comes lower population growth and an increasing standard of living.
David
Two things:
1) It is materially and historically evident that growth has directly caused the poverty you seek to quell.
2) The *better* brand of growth you seek to employ to redress the balance is vaporware. A dream. A Quixotic notion. No? Tell me your plan for it.
Regarding the latter:
Forget Africa for a moment. How are standard of living trends going in Inner East Los Angeles? What about Detroit? I know beyond any doubt that the fringes of burgeoning East Coast Australian cities are decaying into morbid enclaves of alienation and pointlessness. I shudder at the Los Angelisation that is relentlessly underway in SE Queensland, not because it makes any sense but because it makes so much profit for a very few. Most people can't afford the price tag of inner urban 'smart' growth, which is really just a marketing fraud to dress up plain old unsustainable growth, as is being now demonstrated as Portland O., chokes on its ingrowing footprint. Outer suburban densification delivers even worse outcomes. Yet the seeds of its eventual necessity continue to be sown in 'master planned' estates that displace ecology and farmland and implant onerous legacies of undeliverable social desire.
You want to use less coal and make life better. I applaud that. However your method of expanding fission and continuing to increase aggregate energy consumption exacerbates the core problem rather than addressing it. Your faith in the market to silently deliver a sweet spot regarding population is baseless. This crucial outcome has to be decisively sought, energised by its conceptual presence within common conversation. That can begin immediately. If it can't it is only due to self-censorship on the topic, which means it never can and we will have nature impose its ruling upon some inflated future. One delivered by this thorium bullet perhaps.
I want to use less coal by using less energy, delivered via a more modest, less populous, less centralised, more locally aware, locally autonomous and genuinely diverse society. If that is politically impossible due to greed then so is your aspiration for a growth driven transition to stability. The credit crisis begs us to invest in a new way. If enough people do not clamour for a new way out of this crisis, their corrupt representatives will dig the old rut to an even greater and more iniquitous depth.
Using less energy makes many more options possible than does using more energy. But they do require some cooperative thought as their parts are not readily obvious from within the familiarity of the energy fog.
Fond of tribal warfare?
might not be the utopia often imagined. That locally autonomous part can be quite the can of worms.
Fond of tribal warfare?
Fond of a globally homogenous police state?
As the machine gets bigger, us little cogs all get smaller and less significant. And then it breaks and we get 'tribal' warfare with no mores or decorum.
That locally autonomous part can be quite the can of worms.
That depends a lot on:
How you read and interpret history.
Your understanding of the vital parts of culture, the consequences of damage to those parts, when (and often why) that damage was wrought upon local cultures, and what their character might actually have been prior to that damage - ie how 'savage' were they really?
How clearly you perceive and understand the systemic incidence of modern violence.
I am not saying there have not been trade offs, and mind you I have cloistered myself in the taiga but not off the grid, so I certainly don't enjoy too close a contact with the machine but I am still connected.
I've spent significant time with the nonliterate remnant of a preliterate society. I don't claim to have had more than a glimpse of that society's former richness. There have been tradeoffs. I'm near twice the age I would have lasted in most societies predating the one I belong to. There are always trade offs.
My point is you might not get the tradeoffs you expect.
There's a whole sky up above. you know...
Aangel,
Do you know of drawbacks?
If so please state them. Boogy man in the closest is not playing fair.
As well as CCPO down below.
Hiding under bugaboos is not logical.
Sorry to be blunt but time is awasting. We need to fast track something if we are to have a chance. This seems fair to me.
I await the discussion of real drawbacks.Not those that state we will use it badly. That's a given but generations change and new orders come into being. Right now powering down is going to eliminate us unless something changes the future.
Airdale
Airdale
Airdale, i second that, Rational discussions of limitations are positive things, playing the fear card is not.
What you call fear I call "wisdom."
it is prudent to look for negative possibilities, but it goes well beyond wisdome besure that you are going to fund them.
At least one drawback I can see now is what I already pointed out: we'll will consume our planet until it is exhausted unless we fundamentally transform how we relate to the earth and our place on it.
Others drawbacks to this technology will appear over time. They always do. When they first appeared, cars were hailed as the way to keep cities clean from all the horse manure. Only later did we see problems they introduced (traffic fatalities, pollution, suburban sprawl, etc.).
As for our ability to use this technology Charles is advocating "wisely," I think our track record with many, many other technologies is very poor indeed.
I have no idea what you are referring to.
Cheers
Why?
Why would replacing investments in coal with investments in thorium result in faster destruction of the planet? Coal is dirtier and thorium likely won't be cheaper. We'll just replace something dirty with something clean. How can that speed up environmental harm?
Actually, it has, in relative terms. Poverty and wars have decreased dramatically. What remains is mostly due to socialist policies and in some cases due to deep-rooted religious and nationalist ideas.
That can only come about in the wake of prosperity.
No, that is just more of the same type of thinking that hasn't worked so far: "when the circumstances change then the humans will change." Technology is just another element of circumstance. Another way to call your "deep-rooted religious and nationalistic ideas" is being human.
What you are saying has been advocated for centuries in different forms by different people. Advocates of previous changing circumstances (technologies) sounded like this:
* "when rails stretch from sea to sea on every continent, everyone will be prosperous and peaceful"
...didn't happen
* "with the advent of the flying machine, people previously isolated will come to know each other and there will be peace and prosperity"
...didn't happen
* "if everyone has a personal computer, we will have access to the whole of knowledge and everyone will be peaceful and prosperous"
...didn't happen
* "with instantaneous and cheap communication via the Internet, THEN there will be peace and prosperity"
...didn't happen
or, for a little variety:
* "with only one superpower, there will be peace and prosperity."
...didn't happen
Are you seeing the pattern? A bit of research will turn up countless advocates for one technology or another who were thoroughly convinced that this time their invention or pet technology would finally usher in a new era for humans, and all have failed.
That's because transformation of how we live on the planet must happen by each individual on a personal level. It does not depend on circumstances, of which technology is just one of many.
Collectively, we are trapped in a hamster wheel running from one technological "panacea" to the next foolishly thinking that "this time it will be different" when it never is. We are trapped and most don't even know it. The only way out of the trap starts by seeing the trap.
The thorium reactors you and the others on this thread are advocating will do nothing more than prolong our rapaciousness. Perhaps we will push back the boundary of the energy limit, but only far enough for us to meet another limit, far before we reach the 9-10 billion people someone on this thread actually thinks the planet can bear.
Well, aangel, as I said, you're wrong. Tech does brings peace and prosperity, just not completely and right away. I don't know why anyone would expect sudden perfection - I think you overinterpret for the sake of argument.
Tech makes our societies more advanced and prosperous societies. It enables communication and necessitates education. It gives us an abundance which enables us to be generous towards one anouther and to devote attention to environmental issues. The abundance is destroyed by wars, so we avoid them - it is no longer possible for entire countries to benefit from wars. Slowly, science and education eradicates religiosity. That "personal level" of transformation happens large scale because of tech and all that comes with it.
Without progress, there is certain collapse. Perhaps you are right that there is collapse even with progress, but stats ARE improving, and our only chance is to continue to advance tech and grow economically. The next 50 years will prove critical.
The prosperity and abundance which technology has brought to any society has always had a cost.
I would feel more accepting of your POV if I was unaware of that cost. In order to support our technologically based "first world" lifestyles we have taken, by direct force or coercion, the materials we required to build them. In our own countries we remove mountain tops, deforest, destroy topsoil. We destroy the economies and political stability of 2nd and 3rd world nations to make our removal of their resources more efficient. A lot of the techno-gadgetry that we enjoy is manufactured in areas where a good wage is bare subsistence and a healthy work environment is unknown.
I find it humorous that you assert that technology has bought us the prosperity and time to pay attention to environmental issues. Quite likely the promotion of technology has created those issues.
I would have to rephrase your statement and say that "Tech makes SOME societies more advanced and prosperous." Then I would add the caveat that the method by which we have adopted technology has destroyed the potential for advancement and prosperity of others.
Our wars have been economic - this does not mean that folks have not died and environments have not been destroyed. We just don't see it because we do it elsewhere or we control the media sufficiently that our local excesses are not big news.
I firmly believe that every technology has an associated cost. Furthermore, I believe that it is the potential for profit - not improvement to society - which drives the expansion of technology. Cleaning up after yourself costs money and lessens profit, so it doesn't happen. Paying a decent wage costs money and lessens profit, so it doesn't happen. The use of technology does not appear to alter our basic human striving for advantage.
Regards
Al
No. We have generally bought them, and mostly mined them ourselves on our own first world soils.
This is a good thing, of course. It starts a positive spiral in such countries.
Perhaps compared with the 17th century, but not compared with the 1950-ies. We are way past the worst stage of development. Things are getting better, and no developing countries need to have as dirty industrialization periods as we had, b/c tech is better and cleaner now. The only way forward is to continue this path.
You would be wrong. It is far easier for any developing nation to have progress now than before, b/c widely available technology, as well as richer countries' demand for products, present lots of low hanging fruit, development-wise.
Uneducated leftist sentiments, I'd say.
Not compared with older tech. Some things are simply better.
We should be thankful. Profit is an excellent driving force for progress, much better than political whims and monuments.
If cleaning up doesn't happen, then the polluted area isn't owned by somebody that cares. Paying a "decent wage" shouldn't happen - wages should strictly be the result of market forces, so that unemployment is minimized and so that people gravitate towards more productive work. This improves standards of living the fastest. Minimum wages, for example, is sheer lunacy.
Let me guess, you are not an 8 year old battery recycler in Bangladesh.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/28/what.matters.dust/index.html
I'm speechless
Al
Well, I'll say one thing. He paints a picture of the company that Nuke advocates have to side with.
and Jeppen Replies:
'No. We have generally bought them, and mostly mined them ourselves on our own first world soils.'
Uneducated centrist sentiments, I'd say. Just ask the Navajo how many reservations they were shuffled away from throughout Colorado, for example, when these otherwise desolate wastelands turned out to have mineral wealth under them.
Pathetic.
Jokuhl: Well, I'll say one thing. He paints a picture of the company that Nuke advocates have to side with.
What about this one?
Comment:
Our wars have been economic - this does not mean that folks have not died and environments have not been destroyed. We just don't see it because we do it elsewhere or we control the media sufficiently that our local excesses are not big news.
Reply:
Uneducated leftist sentiments, I'd say.
!??!
Where to begin to address that?
If someone is not paying attention to evident experience then fact and reality just don't apply within the dialogue. At least not until the walls begin to crumble so close to home that the tremors cannot physically be ignored.
And where would I begin to address THAT?
(What "economic wars" is the guy talking about? Protectionism? Ok, then I agree, but I don't think that is what he meant. It's obvious that first-world presence gives third-world countries enormous possibilities to fast-track their own economies through trade and simple use of knowledge produced by us.)
Read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. It will be enlightening.
Al
I don't really have the time or willpower to actually respond, but hey read this book!
Thhpppt.
I don't really have the time or willpower to actually respond, but hey read this book!
Thhpppt.
I simply thought you were talking about more modern theft from other nations, along the lines of "stealing Iraqi oil". Displaced locals have generally benefited from material extraction and come to enjoy the "first world lifestyles" that that extraction made possible.
Is this the Lullaby that helps you sleep at night?
Iraq (thank you) is a fine example. Niger Delta comes to mind. How about Chiquita Bananas? The Gold Trade, Diamonds, Chocolate Harvesting in West Africa, Uranium in the American West, and the Native health issues that have been conveniently side-stepped..
Not to mention computer manufacturering workers in China, and back office workers in India. but China and india seem to be prispering. And Niguria has a lot of well educated University graduates who someone will probably put to work soe day.
This criticism cannot apply to thorium technology which basically does not require any mining for thousands of years. Advances in mine safety technology would make thorium mining a safe profession for future Navajo miners. Navajo uranium miners were not subjected to more radon than non Navajos during the 1950's and 60's. Thus Navajos were not singled out for victimization by a cruel uranium mining industry.
Alakazaam points out what I should have written in my note: these technologies do not bring universal peace and prosperity, and the peace and prosperity they do bring is highly localized and unsustainable.
People don't often stop long enough to really understand what unsustainable actually means. It means that current trends will both stop at some point —which is precisely what is happening now.
BTW, a modern economy is just another technology, and right now it is in the process of collapse. So your assertion that more technology will do the job seems to make no sense to me. Of course you might say we need a different technology, but that is just jumping on the hamster wheel again.
aangel, what some might see as a collapse, others might view as a transformation. Is it not the case that while old technologies and institutions are dying, new technology and institutions are being born?
In ways they have brought peace, especially in the developed western world. We have not had a major war with one another in over fifty years, well over the average lifespan of less than two centuries ago. This was unheard of before our advances.
The debate here is the right one. Has our increased library and use thereof modified our basic primate behavior enough to allow us to truly prosper on this planet. These debates indicate we are approaching at least the possibility of such.
Access to and comprehension of the library does not progress evenly throughout the race. Maybe we are only at a major pinch point in the distribution and utilization of the information we have garnered and as this congestion is relieved our race's behavior will have been positively impacted enough to warrant at least a longer look at the problem. At least some more growth might be required to relieve the congestion in the information stream.
No doubt we have done great damage, but greater damage has been done when no humans were about. Who here claim's full comprehension of all the possibilities and thus the right to determine the only way forward.
"turning into savages fighting over a few remaining dregs of fading energy"
Airdale, did I suggest or advocate for or even mention this somewhere?
No you didn't state that specifically. It was my comment in the context that if we did not get some replacement energy device online very shortly and relied upon ...well whatever your main thrust was as opposed to the author thesis...then we would be turning into savages fighting....etc.....
Isn't it obvious that without something on the immediate horizon to break this fall that such as I propose regarding savagery would NOT happen?
Its hard to go way back up thread and revisit a post and then remember the replies and statements.
I find you a very reasonable poster. I mean you no disrespect. But I do differ with your views on that subject. Perhaps I overstressed somewhat.
Airdale-I do read between the lines and draw conclusions based on the contextAnd as you know I am very much a doomer but if something really sounds promising ...and I have been searching in vain quite a bit, then I will tend to be proactive on the subject..for what can be lost,,try and miss and forget it? Or try and try to get it.
I see no real pollution or ill effects. The money to test and develop can't be that great ..not compared to the trillions being tossed out the windows as we speak...
not be removing mountain tops, or strip mining our landscapes for coal or other sources of power.
Instead the reason will be to get at DIFFERENT minerals/atoms. Like, oh say, Phosphorous.
read about BLP..hydrinos for Eric Blairs sake..
And yet everytime I ask the 'hydrinos are real' people to show the cold when the energy level returns to the planetary norm, no one can show that.
Charles Barton has a similarly tough task - show that somehow THIS time man's machines and man's maintenance of their machines will be different. Thorium reactors do sound better - but I've heard 'sounds good' talk before. The 1950's rhetoric was about how fission power would be 'too cheap to meter' and how the US would have such demonstratively safe fission power that the US Government would not have to insure the industry. Yet the Anderson bill keeps getting re-upped and the meters keep getting upgraded - not removed.
I'm sure Thorium will be tried, and when it fails I won't be at all surprised. What will be surprising is the technology working as advertised.
This is the first GOOD news I have read in many moons.
And you believe that Hydrinos are real and that somehow YOU are gonna survive from foraging from the land and everyone else will just die. (VS the foraging lands being stripped bare)
Your position reminds me more of http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf than anything else Sir.
Well Eric I have a lot of land to forage on and I am good at foraging.
If others die from starvation then that is not my fault. I heeded long ago the yearnings to get back to the land. I put all my assets into that struggle and now is the payoff.
I can look in my pantry and see my canned goods. I can look to the future of using a woodgas burner to can my tomatoes. I can dig my partially started root cellar and be hopeful.
What are you doing? For yourself that is for I am a bit selfish about my own survival...I still ride my Harley mind you but I also have a very small Honda Trail 90 ..well two of them and some very old VW bugs that I might convert.
As the motto goes "country boys can survive"..quaint bullshit but yet for me I hope I am getting it right..
But would I trade it all for continued advances in the human race via technology and perhaps one day of us going to Mars? In a Chicago heartbeat.
So I follow anything that holds promise and hope for it but cover my bets as far as I can..
What am I doing wrong that tweaks young Eric Blair's nose hairs?
Airdale
Airdale, you are doing what can't be done by everyone. There is simply not enough space.
Powering down and carefully reversing growth, somewhat like decommissioning a reactor before not after it melts down, is the only way to hope to deal with the mess that your own preparations make clear you acknowledge is underway. Why you think the mess can be sorted with a new form of energy is completely beyond me.
Coal and oil are exceedingly dirty, but that is not their most essential impact. Until we can commonly desire, openly discuss and institute the means of behaving better than yeast, we will continue to decimate ourselves with too much energy.
dohboi I don't understand your argument. These LFTR nuclear reactors can provide all 7 billion people of the world with energy. Solar, wind, geothermal cannot provide it at a competitive cost. Why is that a problem?
Sorry to be so long to respond--busy week.
I'm not sure I can explain it better than I did in my first post on the thread,or better than many more eloquent than I who have taken similar stands here.
I would just ask you to imagine what people in the real world are most likely to do with a huge new energy source? Will they likely improve the chances for a livable planet, or will they use the energy to use up, disrupt, and pollute the only planet we have?
I realize that the question is so far outside of mainstream thinking that many will find it incomprehensible or offensive.
But if this point--when PO, GW, sixth and seventh great extinction events...--if this bizarre and unique moment in the history not only of humans but of life on earth is not the time to reconsider deeply held notions about human behavior and humans' place in the world, I just don't know what time would be.
Best to all,
Dohboi
Once more we see why the need for scientific education is so important and must be maintained. Few people (including myself) have enough technical knowledge to even debate this alternative with authority, and certainly the number of qualified technicians and designers able to develop and oversee the planning of a workable reactor of this type must be very small (under 50 people?)
If this alternative can deliver all that it promises it is astounding to me that China and India (both already nuclear powers) are not pushing a very serious and dedicated program to speed the development of a thorium reactor. The reactor could also (if it works as promised) return the United Kingdom to the forefront of technology development if they dedicated development and research efforts to it. Island nations such as the U.K. and Japan would see thorium reactors as the answer to their dreams one would think...and yet there seems to be little excitement there(?) over the last quarter century.
It is said this was one of Admiral Rickover's pet projects, and he was usually a pretty good judge of technology. We definitely must examine this alternative before we can make any valid conclusions, but it does show promise of great return IF it is viable.
RC
There seems to be activity in India on this front. In recent news we read:
India says no private sector in nuclear power industry
US nuclear business delegation visits India
Apart from the burnup fraction other factors in reactor choice must be initial capital cost, speed of construction and running costs. For example I gather a 1000 MWe pressurised light water reactor can cost $4bn plus site costs and take 5 years to build in theory. Maybe that's optimistic. Other costs are fuel in, waste out, water supply and staffing. The LF reactor would have to compare well against several of these criteria.
On thorium supply I gather current uranium mines that have brannerite ores (eg Olympic Dam) are putting aside tailings containing rare earths and thoria. Thus there are millions of tonnes of surface 'ore' that don't even need hard digging.
Given that the useful energy in a ton of Th used in a thorium breeder is ~100x as much as that from a ton of uranium used in a LWR, the thorium in those tailings piles would be sufficient to crash the market for raw fuel for several decades at least.
The high power density of the thorium reactor design could allow mass production in factories and shipping them to the destination from there. It looks like the reactor could be small enough in perhaps 100 - 300 MWe power rating to be shipped by truck (ie get through tunnels and under bridges easily).
Of course, a crash program would also take these production aspects into account.
the US Thorium reserve estimate was sharply increased by the USGS in the latest publication from Oct 2008
http://sev.prnewswire.com/mining-metals/20090112/NY5794512012009-1.html
The latest India/ thorium power joint venture to develop a thorium fuel cycle
Infrastructure player Punj Llyod and US-based Throium Power, which signed an MoU last month to form a 50:50 joint venture company for exploring commercial nuclear power opportunities, are targeting an investment of up to $1 billion in the venture.
I'd just like to point out that you never used the dreaded word breeder.
As far as I can see the 'starter' fuel would be some tons of U-235 or plutonium.
It is irritating when breeder proponents say you don't need 'fissile' fuel; every reactor
has products of fission plus in this case xenon gas waste which must be removed and replaced with fresh thorium.
I'd also like to point out that the Indian thorium program based on heavy water has been a failure; new commercial scale Indian reactors are Russian VVR-1000 LWR.
A thorium gas cycle reactor in Germany has been closed.
Still if this can be run in modified LWRs, that's extremely interesting.
The scientific community in an absolute panic in the face of global warming and is turning to nuclear power against conventional coal.
I am hostile of any expansion of nuclear power however thorium/U-233 does look like the most promising.
If TPTB are going to pursue some nuke thing it should be this.
Retrofit an old 1 GWe unit
like they did Shippingport.
Most people including most nuclear opponents understand the word breeder to refer to Liquid Metal Fast Breeders, that are uranium cycle reactors. I am not a fan of the LMFBR, and so I perfer to not have to deal with the confusion that the word breeder creates. I only ask that the critics of nuclear power to give the LFTR a fair hearing before they judge it.
I am no expert on this technology but wonder, if this essay is accurate, then why all the research into fusion? How do fusion budgets compare to thorium budgets?
Ralph Moir was a fusion researcher during his scientific career. Now retired, he is a LFTR advocate.
0. New technology does not get much money in general - relative to money spent tweaking the old stuff that is the bulk of the economy
1. Nuclear fusion budgets are not that big - less than $1 billion/year and most of that for the big tokomaks
2. Some of the most promising nuclear fusion projects only have a few million each
3. Thorium reactor research has several million/year but it is spread out among different countries
The main thing for both promising fusion and for new thorium reactors is that they are below the level of effort needed to have a clear development plan to achieving commercial reactors. They are in bootstrapping research and development mode.
Where is the example of the best technological option getting the most support ? Most of the money in energy research and development goes to coal and oil. How about the most technologically promising oil recovery technology THAI/CAPRI ? A few million dollars.
Before the crisis how much went to electric cars or hybrid cars in North America ? they spent more developing the next SUV.
This is rather amusing.
The only way fusion works is as a neutron source for a blanket of...THORIUM as was suggested by Bethe.
And in fact a significant part of the fusion research community realizes this may be the most practical path forward. There is speculation that that the Chinese participation in the world's fusion energy program is for just this purpose. Their plans for fission energy development are staggering. Where will they get the fuel?
"I am no expert on this technology but wonder, if this essay is accurate, then why all the research into fusion?"
Fusion involves something really new scientifically: Before fusion the common belief among physicists was that there were three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. But early fusion research identified a new state of matter which has been dubbed 'plasma'. It is scientifically interesting in contrast to the 'grubby engineering detail' of LFTR. My words are meant to characterize the attitudes of the members of the community, not my own. Me - I attempt to avoid argument with opinionated people. ;-)
The fission bomb and then the fusion bomb are remarkable counterexamples to the general rule that simpler, older science makes for more effective (military) technology.
Really, there are other forces at work rather than pure reason in choosing what gets funded in government research. Or maybe pure reason implies that pure scientific interest _should_ be more important than mere commercial profit ;-)
For some I've read of how thorium is the greatest thing since the pocket in the shirt.
So why isn't it as common as that pocket?
A needed analysis would cover its pitfalls, obstacles to its widespread implementation, and plausible methods with cost and time required to overcome these.
There are a lot of analyses that are needed. Once we started down one nuclear route, it is difficult to change to another route, even if it should prove to be better.
Hopefully we will have other articles in the future on this topic.
A while back, you posted the article on toe-heel air injection for tar sands. The process was to revolutionize tar oil production in an environmentally sensitive manner. (To be fair, as I recall, the article did not tout THAI as a cure-all, but made grandiose claims on it's use as a silver bullet) The problem is that the then untested process works only in very limited situations, situations which presently appear to curtail its use to insignificance.
Is thorium in the same boat? What is it's actual implementation probability? It seems there are more and more solutions to the energy crisis, solutions with energy too cheap to meter, eroi's in the stratosphere. When you ask "Then why isn't it done?" the answer always falls around the government, foolish markets, conspiracies, or if you only knew. Well, I don't know, please explain.
I'm not picking on you or the author, just that I wish we'd have an honest appraisal, a look at both sides, for like Davebygolly below, I'm certain there's alot we're not being told.
Petrobank THAI /Capris oil processes
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/09/petrobanks-capri-thai-processes-for.html
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/petrobank-capri-thai-processes-for.html
The Petrobank oil recovery technologies (Thai/Capri) is actually cheaper; for instance, the estimates are that this will cost $20,000 per producing barrel to put a project together, and it likely will be less, whereas your average SAGD (steam assisted gravity drainage) project is $60,000 per producing barrel. So, it's a third, and if you add an upgrader, you can get into the $80–$100,000 per producing barrel.
commercialization plans
http://www.petrobank.com/hea-commercializationplans.html
I just read the obituary of John Stallings Jr. in the NY times and thought the last quote in the notice was perhaps something we should all keep in mind.
"In his 1965 paper about his nonproof of the Poincaré Conjecture, after he had explained his errors “in hope of deterring others from making similar mistakes,” Dr. Stallings ended on a musing note:
“I was unable to find flaws in my ‘proof’ for quite a while, even though the error is very obvious. It was a psychological problem, a blindness, an excitement, an inhibition of reasoning by an underlying fear of being wrong. Techniques leading to the abandonment of such inhibitions should be cultivated by every honest mathematician.”
Why do intel and AMD processors support a zillion different legacy instructions, including a piece of shit stack-based FPU? Why do they have so few registers when it's clear that it would be cheap to implement and a huge speed advantage to having many more of them? Why do they preserve the behaviour of an instruction from an old processor in ugly corner cases for which the manual specifically states the behaviour is undefined and likely to change in future releases? Why do they still present a CISC instruction set to the programmer while decoding all the instruction on the fly to the RISC instructions(micro-ops) that it executes internally?
For each person who owns a processor with the architecture you have another person that could write a useful application or might want to buy your application, for each processor produced you head further down the learning curve and are able to produce them cheaper; the barrier to entry just grows and grows with each passing year. Even the switch to 64-bits is painfully slow and that's with a well developed legacy mode for supporting 32-bit applications on 64-bit OS. Starting over on a clean slate may be desirable but it would be a monumentous project and not necessarily in the best interests of existing players.
Nuclear technology is in the same sorry state. The regulatory environment is geared towards giant ~1 GW reactors(both implicitly in the fee structure which tends towards the same cost per reactor for large and small reactors and sometimes explicitly as in the NRC recently stating that they intend to put small reactors on the back-burner). LWRs didn't take off because they were the best reactors, they took off because the government wanted to use them for sub-marines and air-plane carriers and had already developed them for that use when it handed over design details to private industry under the atoms for peace programme(necessitating only minor refinement for commercialization and power production). After the construction of Shippingport, private industry knew exactly what to expect and had a template for how to design their own. So that's what they did and for each one they built their component suppliers headed down the learning curve, their suppliers became more numerous, the work force capable of working as operators on LWRs grew, the NRC and equivalent institutions in other countries gained experience and expertice in reviewing LWR license applications and the rules changed to conform to the specific quirks of LWRs.
I think you'll need either an international consortium of existing nuclear suppliers and designers dedicated to the task or a major effort by one of the US national labs or foreign equivalents to make serious headway on any kind of nuclear reactor design that's not a derivative of the traditional designs.
"Nuclear technology is in the same sorry state. The regulatory environment is geared towards giant ~1 GW reactors"
Same holds true in the pharma industry. Victor Niederhoffer says in his most recent book that loosening FDA regs. could save 60K more people than are saved by tight regs. He says there is something like a billion dollar minimum entry fee for designing a major drug today and that x large part of this is for complying w/ regs and tests. Sorry to be vague. These are the parts I remember offhand.
Matt
Why? Why do so many run MSFT Windows when Linux is far better and is FREE?
Why. Advertising and FUD.And huge stacks of money.
This technology needs to be put on the fast track and immediately.
I doubt it will get that though. Pity.
Airdale--I run Linux but everyone else uses MSFT so I have to use it as well in order to fix the beast for others.
Whoa! I know both well and I'm calling you on bull$#!†. Linux is a dog and serious people need MSFT to get real work done.
And I am calling you on being an 'appliance user' and not being very well informed.
The net runs on Linux/Unix.
Linux can be installed on almost any older box and will leave MSFT in the dust. Ohhhh yeah tell me about Vista...a real sleazy mousy piece of code.
Read ESR's Cathedral and The Bazaar. Please.
Lalaland!
Airdale-I use MSFT for the people whose systems I work on use it but for me its Linux/Unix all the way. I can therefore FIX code errors and travel on. With MSFT you just get a hugely degraded system,,,BLOATWARE
Appliance user eh? My experience with linux/unix is that it is goddawful slow.
Tell me how one can do the following things faster on a linux system:
I'll bet that not one of those things can be done faster on a linux system. And in the case of some tasks, you might not be able to do them at all. I can think of dozens more tasks that would make a linux system about as useful as a paperweight.
I'll bet that you couldn't name one user-oriented task that linux could do faster than windoze. Including something as simple as cropping a photo.
Off topic, I should not have gone into this.
Airdale
Despite having a horrid development team Mplayer on Linux can do the video processing very fast from the command line. I use sox or mplayer on Linux to do tempo shifts dozens of times a day without having to think about it, and 'cat /dev/null > $1'. If you mean "from a GUI", you can crop that photo faster than I can. I don't need to crop many photos in my line of work.
For you there is probably no advantage to using Linux.
For me, there is.
Why do so many run MSFT Windows when Linux is far better and is FREE?
Lack of programs to run on it? That's my reason. It's why I haven't made the switch. I'd love to. Has the situation improved? Would all the software have loaded now be able to be kept? Doubt it...
What is the state of things wrt software for Linux?
Cheers
Same as the state of things for any operating system:
It depends on what you want to do.
For server side software I'd say there is nothing better. For desktop software it's OK, but not exceptional. There's an awful lot of unpolished software out there for it.
Some specializations don't have best-of-breed software available on Linux, or even halfway decent. Some of these are furthermore not susceptible to being run under Wine with decent performance/stability.
For my money the pain involved in running on Linux is less than I've had from Windows, reasonable people can and do disagree on this.
I make my living on Windows and have played with about 10 different versions of Linux over the years. I recently decided it was finally up to what I needed for a "secondary" desktop, and put up a decent unit, thinking to use it for standard work (documents, spreadsheet models, web) but found that applications which initially appeared quite functional always were missing 3 or 4 small but for me, critical bits of functionality. Adding together the fact that my core CAD, FEMM, Industrial Instrumentation etc. applicationns are only available on windows and the Linux machine has sat un-started for three months now. If I ever get back to playing with the interactive PABX application I put on it, or developing a new controller for my stirling engine, I might re-start it but for now, am resigned to exploiting the un-matchably huge development resources companies like MS put into the core desktop application programs.
Drat! You beat me to it. :)
If thorium isn't already here, then there's a reason and a story we aren't being told.
Edit: Which is not a complaint against the post. It's one of the great things about TOD, that these things get aired from all sides.
history of liquid flouride
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2006/04/brief-history-of-liquid-fluori...
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/cj-bartob-sr-at-ornl-into-1960s...
Admiral Rickover saw that the light water Reactor could power for more than submarines. I would also be useful for powering surface ships, and Rickover realized civilian power plants. Rickover had pushed for the development of reactors large enough to power aircraft carriers. President Eisenhower had called for the development of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and the aircraft carrier reactor allowed Rickover to kill two birds with one stone. Rickover donated a naval reactor to serve as a prototype civilian power reactor. At the same time, the navy was still able to do research with the reactor.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12477&page=59
Book on Nuclear pioneer Alvin Weinberg
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m5623np72344x822/
"that light water become the main line for commercial development has been a surprise to me"
Other systems had advantages.
LWR (light water reactors) had proven reliable power for the Nautilus.
moved on land the Shippingport PWR.
The momentum it gave to light water technology was enough to ward off intrusions by competing technology.
===========
first mover advantage to Light water reactor and now 5 years to just to approve another light water reactor of proven design. How long to get a new reactor technology approved ? How many novel nuclear technologies have their been over the last three decades ?
If thorium isn't already here, then there's a reason and a story we aren't being told.
We have bureaucratically painted ourselves locked to the current nuclear technology. On top of the market barriers to moving away from something that worked "good enough".
Drat! You beat me to it. :)
If thorium isn't already here, then there's a reason and a story we aren't being told.
What I'm reading from the article is that they don't have the benefits of producing weapons materials.
Here's what wiki has to say, in an otherwise complimentary article:
"Problems include the high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of the traces of the short-lived 232U that contaminates the 233U fuel; the similar problems in recycling thorium due to highly radioactive 228Th; some weapons proliferation risk of 233U; and the technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing. Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available."
What is the magnitude of these problems, are there additional?
doug fir
U-232 is the big problem for would be nuclear proliferators. it is also a big problem for the use of the thorium in solid fuel reactors, but it is not a problem for the LFTR, because all reactor salt chemical processing is automatic and takes place within the reactor hot cell. The presence of U-232 in LFTR core salts is actually view by LFTR advocates as a big plus. It greatly diminishes the likelihood of diversion of U-233 for weapons purposes, and it would make theft of of reactor salts or uranium from the reactor extremely risky.
Much of the LFTR fuel processing technology has already been developed by Oak Ridge scientists, including my father. What remains is to determined which of the options explored in oak Ridge, would be most effective. The thorium cycles for solid core reactors would cause more challenges, but considering the advantages of a liquid fluoride salt core reactor, and the advanced state of LFT"R technology, why would anyone who knows the score want to develop solid core thorium cycle technology?
Damn. I hate cold showers. I was so excited back there. We might have been able to avoid the coming population bottleneck.
Darwin wins-again.
Pity, I was quite fond of the ape.
See you on the other side.
Something Charles didn't say: because the LFTR has no solid fuel and needs only thorium salts, there is no fuel fabrication involved and no on-going market for fuel enrichment or fabrication. If a company is going to make money from LFTRs, it has to make most of it up-front from the construction. This probably deterred companies in the PWR business from destroying their existing business model.
Engineer-Poet and profit will be made though mass prouction and high demand. The Motto of the LFTR paradigm is "if you build 'um cheap, they will come." After you build them reactor service will become a second profit center. And of course increasing energy demands in less developed countries will also be a major business goal.
Thanks Charles and Gail for an interesting post. I had not heard of Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactors. A ray of hope for all us doomers? Let's hope so.
For further reading, gear-heads may want to start with the Wikipedia article on the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and continue with the references cited at the bottom.
I am sure Charles in aware of my objections to nuclear power however I have stated on a number of occasions that if I had to, for some reason choose nuclear power I would choose thorium. I prefer the accelerated thorium reactor (http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/G009864/1) as it has no chance of any type of meltdown and produces nothing that can be used for weapons nor can it be modified to produce anything for weapons.
However in saying this I still ask the question WHY?
Firstly focussing on the supply side like this or Barry Brook at Brave New Climate (http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/16/put-all-energy-cards-on-the-table-...) is a continuation of what got us into this mess in the first place. Increasing an addict's supply is not usually the best treatment and thorium nuclear is the methadone of the energy supply world. That is, it is relatively safe and clean however it does nothing for the base problem which is that our society consumes too much and wastes too much.
It would be impossible to deploy a electricity system based on renewables as large proportion of supply without major changes the electricity grid. The grid has to be smarter with smart loads that can respond to changes in supply in real time. The grid has to have new distributors like HVDC that can also incorporate storage into the end stations. Also the grid of most countries needs major structural work to ensure that older parts that are nearing the end of their lifetimes are replaced.
It is however perfectly possible to deploy thorium reactors keeping the present creaking grid and, given the high cost of nuclear and the waiting time, there would be much pressure to deploy it as quickly as possible without any changes just to get it done.
Also there are another resources that are abundantly available in completely limitless quantities that require no mining to obtain. They are wind, sun, tide and waves. All are powered from the sun and in the case of tides the moon and are expected to last 500 million years if our present theories of star formation and lifetime are correct. Why solve the problem with methadone for centuries when we have the chance to solve it forever by kicking the habit? We can now setup up future generations with limitless power rather then handing them the problem of what to do in centuries when the available thorium runs out.
The effort and cost required to widely develop and deploy thorium reactors would be no less than the effort required to deploy large scale renewable power that is available today with no development times. The HVDC links, the storage and supply elements are in in place and working today ready to go.
Finally for nuclear addicts there exists nuclear reactors of sorts beneath our feet that we can drill for and pump water down to and extract massive amounts of energy from. All without any mining or building. I am of course referring to geothermal power.
Thorium reactors while seeming to be good do nothing for poorer countries where renewables are scalable from village to city. If we use renewables on a massive scale the problems of deploying this technology to poor countries becomes far easier and we are not being two faced by using nuclear power wastefully ourselves (us being the First World) while expecting the Third World to conserve and use renewables which they would view as second class power systems as we do not use them, only foister them on the poor.
It seems like we need to look at all the options available. Without proper analysis, we can't know which choice is best.
"Renewables on a massive scale" is almost a contradiction in terms. They have so far been slow to scale up.
Gail the Actuary - ""Renewables on a massive scale" is almost a contradiction in terms. They have so far been slow to scale up."
Are you sure this is true? One renewable source is increasing beyond all predictions:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/magazine/story?id=53498
"The wind power industry in the US has been growing dramatically in recent years, and the rapid pace of development has made it difficult to keep up with trends in the marketplace. Yet the need for timely, objective information on the wind industry and its progress has never been greater. As Figure 1 shows, the country added roughly 5300 MW of new wind power capacity in 2007 – more than twice the previous record set in 2006 – bringing the cumulative total to more than 16,900 MW. This growth translates into roughly US$9 billion (real 2007 dollars) invested in wind project installation in 2007. No other country, in any single year, has added the volume of wind capacity that was added to the US electrical grid in 2007."
or this:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2012/70/
"Little did I know that the United States was, at the same time, on track to actually beat that! A report from Emerging Energy Research, a cleantech consulting firm, points out that the U.S. is now the world's fastest growing market for wind power. Last year 5 gigawatts of wind power were installed, and 2008 will break the record again with 8 new gigawatts under construction. The U.S. will shortly be the world's largest producer of wind energy, surpassing Germany's 22 gigawatts.
If the rate of growth continues, and ideal wind energy areas are exploited, the report says we could hit 150 gigawatts of wind power by 2020! For those of you wondering how much power that is...the average coal plant produces about 800 megawatts of power. So this is enough to displace about 180 coal plants. That's a sizeable hunk of America's power generation!"
This is only one form of renewable that is exceeding nuclear in GW deployed and has done for a number of years. With nuclear stalling due to high costs and uncertain financials it seems that nuclear is the one with massive deployment problems.
Also the new solar thermal systems are just getting up and going:
http://www.ausra.com/news/releases/081023.html
"The Palo Alto, CA-based company, a large-scale solar thermal energy developer and manufacturer, has dropped solar power's costs by simplifying the design of its systems. This also results in the most land-use efficient solar technology. Ausra has demonstrated its ability to manufacture its systems rapidly with a state-of-the-art factory in Las Vegas, NV that can mass produce Ausra's 1,000-foot mirror lines using standard materials to deploy and scale up quickly. The Kimberlina plant was built in seven months.
In addition to providing reliable, cost-effective electricity, the Kimberlina plant also demonstrates Ausra's ability to provide solar mirror fields for industries that need high-temperature steam for their factories, either as retrofits or as part of new plant construction. A range of industries use this "process steam," including: enhanced oil recovery and oil refining; food processing; and pulp and paper manufacturing.
The Kimberlina facility will also serve as the gateway toward developing Ausra's Carrizo Plains solar power plant. In November 2007, Ausra and California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced a power purchase agreement for the 177-megawatt power plant in central California. When completed, Ausra's Carrizo facility will generate enough electricity to power more than 120,000 homes."
Or this:
http://cleantech.com/news/1522/pg-e-solel-in-553-mw-solar-deal
"Pacific Gas and Electric made its second deal of the week today, agreeing to buy 553 megawatts of solar power from Solel Solar Systems' planned Mojave Solar Park.
The solar thermal project will deliver enough power to supply 400,000 homes in northern and central California when it is fully operational.
The solar thermal park won't be ready until 2011. It's to cover up to 6,000 acres, or nine square miles, in the Mojave Desert, relying on 1.2 million mirrors and 317 miles of vacuum tubing."
You can't use wind for all your power, no matter how many GW of capacity you install. In fact, the percentage that can come from wind is not all that high.
Furthermore, you have to show some basis for your claim that ramping up renewables is no more expensive than building nuclear power plants. Right now, I don't see how anyone could know that.
In increasing the penetration of wind, you'd have to dump disproportionally more wind power in the absence of cheap storage, but wind itself is cheap and there's also some optimization to be had from geographically isolated sites which becomes more important in higher penetrations.
This reference deals with most issues:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/72.Decarolis.2005.Threshold.e.pdf
If you look at LWR 'learning curves' in the US things are not looking good. We need a major improvement like LFTR.
Completely false and misleading. For the moment, I'll presume unintentional. 150 GW of wind generation has NO CHANCE of replacing 180 x 0.800 = 144 GW of coal generation. AT BEST, wind's capacity factor is about 25%, meaning your 150 GW of wind will generate about the same amount of power as only 45 to 50 coal stations. Wind's capacity factor in periods of high demand is much lower, approximately 20% or less, depending on location, so without storage, reduce that coal plant count to perhaps 35. [Note: 1) Germany's utilities calculate wind generation a capacity of only 7.5% 2) Ontario, Canada, with 475 MW modern wind generation widely distributed sees many days at midsummer peak demand when wind generation provides less than 2.5% capacity. See Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator - IESO - (Select Hourly Wind Generator Output) ]
NOW. your 150 GW of wind generation with attendant required transmission will cost about $300 billion ($1500 / kw + $500 / kw transmission) while the 35 coal plants will cost about $56 billion ($2000 x 800 x 35)
I'm no fan of coal generation, but think honesty in arguments is mandatory. Solar genration makes a LOT more sense as a renewable than wind, for reasons of a) timing of output b) higher capacity factor c) cheap theermal energy storage.
The primary results of adding wind generation to an existing grid are a) reducing the amount of efficient continuous-run baseload generation which the grid can tolerate. b) increasing the amount of inefficient short-run peaking generation the grid requies. Net result is OFTEN a NET INCREASE in total CO2 emissions. Data available.
Gail makes a good point about the difficulties in converting to renewables on a massive scale. Here is what Vaclav Smil has to say about this possibility http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2008/12/vaclav-smil-on-fossil-...
Vaclav Smil does not appear to understand the exponential growth function.
He does, however, appear to understand the concept of the self fulfilling prophecy, although he is implicit about it.
The challenges to building alternative energy based energy systems for the future are indeed huge. Defeatism doesn't help. However, pessimists like Vaclav Smil do serve a useful purpose - they induce greater policy response to deal with the problems.
If you have read many of Smil's works it is clear that he has an excellent command of math and exponential functions.
To me, he comes off as more of a historian and agnostic than a pessimist though he could easily be labeled as a curmudgeon.
Notwithstanding all of the wonderful opportunities we have with renewables, smart grid upgrades, Fourth Generation Nuclear, etc. I would not discount his logic.
I would not discount the fact that many of these technologies are continuing to grow exponential with no inherent show stoppers to the limits that Smil is sceptical about. 30% wind a problem in the US, no way, not even with very little grid upgrade (we might still end up with a crappy grid but not much crappier than it is today). With Barack Obama now president, a lot of incentives are ready to be fired up. I don't discount Smil's logic since it provided said purpose of more attention by decision makers. But for the rest, defeatism isn't very valuable.
Exponential growth is all well and good, but there are obvious showstoppers for wind: It is simply to unreliable. If you have that average 30%, it will sometimes produce 90% and sometimes 0%. Good luck balancing that! You need both big grid upgrades and big investments in reserve capacity. (Denmark rapidly scaled to 20% but then capacity has stayed flat, despite their grid being integrated with European neighbours.)
Look, if we can't scale renewables above 20-30%, and have to get the rest from nuclear or coal, why even bother with the renewables? Today the world use 20,000 TWh electricity. So, to produce this, would you rather have:
1. 4,000 thorium reactors
2. 1,000,000 wind turbines, 3,000 thorium reactors, big grid investments and 500 additional thorium reactors to act as reserve for the wind turbines when there is low wind.
I would personally not opt to litter the world with a million wind turbines to have 12% fewer reactors!
Jeppen, you are absolutely correct! In the real world I would "LOVE" to see 20 to 30% renewables and 70 to 80% nuclear. This means we could *shut down coal forever* AND all fossil generation of electricity on our way to eliminating fossil for transportation fuel. We can't due it seriously with renewables...even Denmark (fully integrated into N. Europe's hydro and nuclear grid) talks about "30%" as a real goal...and that's it.
This is why the focus so many of us environmentalists is so *wrong*, it's not going to solve the real problem, which is eliminating coal and fossil generation. The focus should be on nuclear, LFTRs in the long run, and renewables as supplements to that or bridging the technologies.
D.
dwalters, you are wrong about the Danish plans. The goal for 2025 is 50% of electricity from wind. The 30% number refers to the contribution from renewables (wind, biomass etc.) to the total energy mix (heating, transport, electricity etc).
According to wikipedia, Denmark has stood still at about 3100 MW installed capacity since 2003. They are obviously not working towards that ambitious goal.
Also, please realise that with average 50% wind, the wind parks will sometimes generate 200% of demand and sometimes 0%. That is not possible without nice, big, neighbours willing to absorb the shock waves.
There are no hard thresholds, more important is general economics. Much is explained here:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/72.Decarolis.2005.Threshold.e.pdf
This doesn't mention future buffer from plugin hybrids and EVs, which can act as flexible time of charging - G2V and when batteries cost/cycle come down, they might also do even more for V2G.
A thorium crash program, in particular LFTR, would be part of a comprehensive energy policy IMHO, but in no way is it a replacement for wind. It simply is too early to tell, and if, on the long run, it turns out to be better than wind, then market mechanisms will optimise that. There is a risk that thorium will not deliver (for whatever reasons) or will underperform at scaling etc. I think these are small risks, but you're not selling me a LFTR will save us argument. Talking about 3000 thorium reactors when we currently have 0 is a bit disengenious, although I applaud ambitious plans.
I would much prefer to litter the world with wind turbines rather than to continue to spew stuff we don't want into the atmosphere. We can dismantle the wind turbines quite easily. Getting rid of nasties in the atmosphere is that much more difficult.
I might have sounded a bit more categorical than I am. For me it's quite ok to scale wind, for now, b/c low penetrations can be accomodated quite easily using natural gas and hydro as balance. That will replace some coal, and that's good. We could do this while scaling conventional nuclear and researching advanced nuclear. But will we?
If we are serious about getting rid of coal altogether, the only viable option is advanced nuclear. Unfortunately, renewables are used as a reason not to invest in nuclear and as an alibi to continue burning coal. Those who think LFTR and other nuclear tech is a threat to renewables has it completely backwards. Renewable tech, sadly, is THE big psychological obstacle on the path to a fossil free world.
I get your point. Economics is important, if new nuclear builds have a very high levelised cost I just can't see it happen on a huge scale. That's why we need gen4 IMHO.
Exactly. Promoting of wind generation makes so much sense economically for owners of fossil fuel supplies that I'm surprised T. Boone Pickens (N gas) and the big coal boys aren't actively promoting it.
Oh, wait.....
Independent investors can make a good ROI with wind so there's no need for conspiracy rhetoric. Independent investors have a very difficult time to make a good ROI with the new gen3+ plants.
Citing the "Pickens Plan" is not resorting to any "conspiracy theory". It's stating reality. And it takes only a short time with high-school physics and math to see it.
And re your investors, pull the plug on the direct subsidies and the indirect "priority in the dispatch order" and "renewables mandates" subsidies and THEN see how much gets built. According to AWEA, near zero.
Citing the Pickens plan isn't conspiracy theory - but what you implied clearly is. Pickens knows how to make money. Wind gives decent ROI. See the connexion?
Of course pickens will also make lots of money with the natural gas part.
So the subsidy argument pops up again. If you pull the plug out of nuclear power - ie completely deregulate the market, the entire nuclear industry will go bankrupt for various reasons (monthly payoff no longer possible, no private insurance available, insufficient ROI on new investment, miscellaneous liability problems, inability to shut down frequently to cover grid requirements, and a bunch of other reasons).
If you do that, you'll guarantee fossil fuels. Oh yes very strategic policy that.
What matters is what are the trajectories of subsidized technologies like nuclear, wind and solar? What are the learning curves, what will the likely long term performance, cost, EROEI be?
Oh, and high school physics don't cover grid dynamics, and neither have you so far. You just make unquantified rhetoric, but when you look at what's possible with real grid data etc things aren't so bad.
Theoretically, grid demands are most easily met with nuclear rather than wind, but we can make do very economically with large amounts of both. At the very least, rhetoric is not helpful (or even relevant) in whether to use wind or solar and/or nuclear, especially not for something quantifiable as levelised cost.
I strongly disagree. Aside from the limited liability item, no subsidy to civilian nuclear power is sufficient to make any difference to any of the several private operators of the reactors. IF you can prove that there is any direct or indirect subsidy to US power reactor operation, then that should be removed and the cost of power sold increased appropriately. You won't find enough to make a hair of difference. The limit on liability has to this point never cost the US taxpayer one cent, is not ever likely to, and is well structured to allow private enterprise to own and operate reactors while ensuring a huge bankrupting penalty against any violater before any taxpayer money ever gets involved. That's what governments are for. You might better rail against insuring beachfront properties from multiple events of hurricane damage.
No "grid dynamics" involved (though if there were I could do it, I've filed patents and written articles on grids). Really. Just basic math and some common sense. Follow the link I provided, download the spreadsheet of wind generation data. It's listed in Mwh by hr, so the calculation of capacity factor for any hour simply amounts to dividing the Mwh provided by the known 475 MW of installed generation. See eg. daytime peak of August 15 2008 for one example of what I'm on about.
If liability is to be fully taken up by private enterprise, then the cost of nuclear, in strict economics terms could be considered infinite since no private insurer will take up the full liability (and no power will be sold subsequently). This is simple economic theory. Not that I think liability is a serious negative for nukes, and economic theory is in this case perhaps too academic.
Subsidies for nuclear are mostly historic. I will indeed advance my argument - without subsidies in the broad meaning of the sense (military funding) we would extremely likely have no nuclear power whatsoever. Important to keep in mind: funding is often needed to jumpstart new technologies. This is not a bad thing at all.
There are various other important subsidies for new nuclear builds: production tax credit, investment tax credit, and loan guarantees, at a rate not unlike wind projects. This is also not a bad thing, these are subsidies that work.
At any rate, the current reactor all in cost does not allow sufficient ROI for private investment to be available; utilities are passing on the extra cost to ratepayers. With properly sited wind projects, a decent ROI can often be had. Gen3+ LWR still has a lot to prove on this issue. I've been very pessimistic so far, but it could be that innovations can improve the business case (MIT donut shaped fuel elements for example). Gen4 I think is more promising in particular LFTR.
So you'r ignoring geographic diversity and the economics of interconnection, and learning curves as well. If I use learning curves for nuclear in the US, it gets more expensive. Strange no?
Now here's a reference for you.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/72.Decarolis.2005.Threshold.e.pdf
There are other things that could be considered as well, such as biomass CAES and wind. CAES is also synergetic with thermal plants, including nuclear.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/38270.pdf
Maybe or maybe not. On a real market-based level playing field, where fossils' external costs are internalized by taxes and nothing is subsidized, run by government or killed with red tape, the market dynamics and innovation would be a whole lot different. I think nuclear - especially inherently fail-safe designs such as LFTR - would thrive in such an environment.
The issue is not the insurance companies. It's the insurance regulators that demand they have some percentage of cash-on-hand to actually do a multi-hundred-billion dollar payout. Most commercial insurers simply don't have that kind of mandated reserve. If the mandated reserve was eliminated from the policies, then insurance companies would be hopping on the bandwagon like crazy since there would never be a payout.
David
There would still be research done even if we had not had a first and second world war and no massive arms races for nuclear wepons. People are curious about how matter works and they already knew about medical uses for radium. I would expect such an alternate history to have a nuclear development based on rectors for basic research and isotope production starting with low cost graphite piles and then heavy water pool type rectors for easy running and fairly low cost. It would then become obvious for scientists doing the math that it could be used for power production and when prices go up and availability down for dirt cheap fossil fuel it would probably be used to boil water in some way. It would alltogeather probably be a lot cheaper then the particle colliders at Cern or the fusion experiments. It would even be the same sales pitch as for fusion power with the difference that it actually would work within a few years.
Actually, the primary reason that the costs of constructing new nuclear went up were due to dramatic increases in the effort and technical legal sophistication of the anti-nuclear industry, mostly lawyers, with I would guess, significant financing from fossil fuel competitors. Nothing at all to do with learning curve.
I searched intensively for the reasons for nuclear cost upward trends, but there appears to be no scientific work (quantification) on what contributed how much etc.
If you have a decent reference on this topic, I'd like to see it.
Do coal companies pay for the deaths and brain damage their product causes? If not should we stop burning coal?
If a Boeing 747 accidentally crashes through the roof of a crowded sports stadium and kills 30,000 people do the airlines have coverage for that loss? If not should we ground the airliners?
If a pharmaceutical laboratory accidentally releases a virus that kills 500,000,000 people around the world, are they covered? If not should we ban drug research?
If an agricultural genetics lab accidentally releases a virus that kills most land based plants, followed by the starvation of most people, are they covered? If not should we stop all genetic research?
Price Anderson coverage is not a subsidy, it is a handicap that no other industry is burdened with.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/5/132847/2209/#comment25
My recommendation is to level the playing field. Maximize R&D and pick the best technology whatever it is.
Increased R&D is very important, however will not make for a comprehensive energy policy all by itself. For one thing, promising technologies often need some help early on to get to volume and scale benefits, and get non-R&D learning effects. This will almost certainly be the case for LFTR, and we need to consider some level of policy for that.
We also need to give markets better signals - socially optimum prices by adding taxes on emissions of GhG, heavy metals, SOx, NOx, particulate and all such nasties. This should be based on marginal cost vs marginal benefit of emissions respectively production (of energy in this case).
The issue of the intrinsic value of a human life is difficult because that value is, well, intrinsic. However we can start with getting some experience (institutions, private etc) based on socially optimum tax rates on emissions, conservatively assuming the intrinsic value to be zero (even the sceptics will agree) and using lower values from the scientific literature on costs vs benefits (so there will be a very strong scientific consensus and said sceptics will mostly agree again).
Then, as emissions rise, the marginal cost will go up, and as scientific understanding advances, further damages will become evident that will further increase the cost of emissions. This in itself provides upward pressure on emissions (which is great for stimulating a move away from those polluting sources).
The revenues from the various taxes must largely (>90% eventually IMHO) return to the people; this is to negate the equity effect that this increase in socially optimal efficiency brings. Think payroll tax reductions (plus similar rebates for special cases, such as pensioners).
This is a scientific, quantifiable but conservative approach so most will agree on this. There should be a good chance of passing it socially and politically.
what would the water/cooling requirements be on 4,000 thorium reactors? more or less than conventional nuclear plants?
One of the selling points of molten-salt reactors is that they can run hot enough to use gas turbines as the heat engines.
If you are willing to sacrifice thermal efficiency and use an open-cycle gas turbine with air as the working fluid, you can dispense with the capital cost of cold-side heat exchangers, cooling towers, pumps... and use no cooling water whatsoever.
Once through seawater cooling is also attractive, considering the consistantly low temperature, low system cost, low parasitic losses, and the fact that most of the demand is near the shore. Care would have to be taken to build a diffusor pipe system so local thermal pollution is mitigated (cheap and well worth the extra investment in plumbing IMHO).
Such a reactor can actually use the rejected 'waste' heat from the heat engine to power a thermal desalination plant, having a strong net benefit on freshwater supply.
Still, open cyles or closed cycles with dry cooling offer advantages in siting flexibility at a relatively small cost increment.
Once through ocean-side cooling is the most efficient. But from the papers on energyfromthorium.com indicate, that's not always desirable. We are going to get almost 50% efficiency from the closed cycle Brayton turbines but some of the waste heat from the back end of that turbine is still useful because it comes out so hot. Kirk Sorensen argues that it's almost wasteful not to use this heat for things like distilling fresh water from sea water or waste water from cities.
David
Absolutely. CHP desal is a double edged sword when it comes to water resources, since it produces fresh water while radically reducing cooling requirements. There is still a small amount of cooling necessary even after the thermal desal system, otherwise delta T suffers - the temperature of the heat rejected from the desal plant is still a fair amount above seawater temperature. Since this is a very small amount (less than 20% of initial reactor thermal output) using the ocean will not pose many issues with local thermal pollution, and with a diffusor pipe system, all is well.
"Renewables on a massive scale" is almost a contradiction in terms. They have so far been slow to scale up.
"They" seems to refer to renewable technologies, when in fact it is many energy utilities that have been slow to adopt them. Some have not been so slow, as you will find many utilities run primarily (or to a large degree) on renewable energy, especially hydro in the US Pacific Northwest and portions of Canada.
Energy tycoon Pickens has a staff that has confirmed his projections of wind energy use. MIT has confirmed the scope and scale of the potential of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). Solar thermal projects are going up around the globe.
Costa Rica generates 98% of it's power from renewable sources.
It comes down to how utilities are incentivized to take action, and penalized when they don't.
Will - You make an excellent point about utility willingness to take action. Not only have they been reluctant to deploy renewables but they have not supported the deployment of distributed renewables by others. For example, how many utility companies do you know of that support the idea of feed-in- tariffs? Implementing a feed-in-tariff program similar to what is in Germany would unleash the entrepreneural spirit here and encourage the significant exponential growth that is needed to make renewables a meaningful part of our generation mix.
Also, some utility executives are keen on seeing a continuing increase energy sales and are not excited about demand side management investments that reduce revenue growth. Striving to reduce revenues is in fact anathetical to most business models. We need "decoupling" on a wide scale to help us get out of this old model and to encourage investments in conservation.
On the positive side, I have been reading "Power" magazine for 30 years and am amazed at how much its content has changed. There are now many discussions about climate change and new renewable generation projects so the visibility on all of this is changing for the better.
A question to the experts: 2030 is mentioned in terms of a realistic time frame for development of this technology under B.A.U if some serious money were thrown at it how quickly could this technology be up and running on a scale that could provide significant power to an Island Nation such as Japan or the U.K?
Japan continues to build conventional reactors, and does not need a radical new technology, But China, India and the United States, will need hundreds of Megawatts woth of new power generating facilities. This can only be accomplishe with mass production of transportable reactors, New sitting approaches, and the use of fissionable materials reserved for nuclear weapons to as starting charges start LFTRs. If a crash program is started by 2012, mas production can begin by 2020. With mass production and a high priorty effort the whole task can be finished by 2030. The project would be similar to the Manhattan Project. This is possible if we accept that a business as usual approach will not solve our problems. The cost however will not be impossibly expensive. Both renewables and conventional nuclear power are labor intensive. The LFTR opens up the possibility of a less labor intensive power source. Les labor means lower costs, and quicker manufacture. I talk about the LFTR paradigm because LFTR technology opens the possibility of doing things differently, and by changing the way we do business, creating multiple efficiencies.
Good on you, Charles. Let's spend gazillion$ on a fleet of Thorium nuke plants that effectively put a vast, distributed renewable energy system out of the hands of our descendants forever. Let's decide to do that even though the bugs have not yet been worked out of the Thorium system and no large working examples exist. Let's do it even though it will mean Oil Redux, with everyone kowtowing to those who have the element in their countries. Let's do it even though there are proliferation issues. Smart man.
Isn't it about time you used the "baseload" argument against renewables?
Mamba I would not advocate the LFTR if I did not believe that it is the lowest cost energy option. I believe that LFTR technology can be launched for less than what the United States spendt in a week during much of 2008 for imported oil. Low cost is the primary reason why I advocate LFTR technology. I also favor a distributive model of electrical production with electricity coming from small mass produced nuclear plants. Renewable energy advocates have not adopted distributive models. In current renewables thinking electricity is to be produced at huge solar facilities in the southwest, and shipped arounf the country by a highly centralized smart grid system using highly centralized HVDC lines. Alternatively power would be produced by hige wind farms located in the great planes or off shore. Similat centralized smart grid.HVDC systems are proposed.
Mamba is talking psychology and you are talking technology.
Please do the technology thing, and let others worry about the psychology. Maybe Obama? Thats IMO what he is there for. He is NOT a nuke scientist/engineer. He is a professional politician.
TOD has been discussing the psychology forever yet the financial crisis stepped all over us and not a warning...well except for Ilargi,who soon after left.
Airdale
Charles,thanks for an informative article and airdale for some spot-on comments.
Unfortunately,every time nuclear is mentioned it brings out a sort of Pavlovian reaction in certain people.They will seldom argue the case on practical grounds but go into paroxysms of rage,including the doomer variety as we have seen in this thread.To the latter I can only say that life,on the personal level, is optional.Others believe that we have to keep trying using the skills and infrastructure which we have.Scepticism is healthy,throwing in the towel is not,and is usually not seriously considered by those who have children.
I believe that,in the energy field,all options other than fossil fuel, should be on the table - nuclear,geothermal,solar thermal,solar PV,wind,tidal.Some are better suited to decentralized applications.Some,like nuclear and geothermal,for base load.From a global perspective,both applications are necessary.
One thing is abundantly clear - we have to get moving on alternative energy sources.The hour is very late.
"The hour is very late",
Yes. Right now we are blasting the tops off mountains for crying out mercy!! Removing them for coal!!!
We have strip mined the devil out of Muhlenberg county and many many other areas. It makes your heart bleed to drive thru and see the destruction.
Yet? Yet? Is there an outcry of anyone here on TOD? Anywhere except for a few musicians gathered up in central Ky and the smokies. They are not making much difference IMO.
Yet we are surely going to strip those mountains down if we keep mining them for the coal.
I remember as a youngster trips to St. Louis and back to Ky. There were no interstates. We crossed the Mississippi in St. Louis, drove thru much of East St. Louis ,Ill and onto route 3 to go to Cairo,Ill.
Let me tell you that the sky was BLACK from the smoke of burning coal in the industries there. Black fallout was everywhere. It was like a living,walk thru absolute hell. I couldn't grasp it.
Bad enough we started using coal in the small towns and cinders were everywhere. More black smoke. Coal dust on your hands. Piles of dirty coal everywhere.
This is not something we need to desire. Its filthy and dirty. Its destroys the land where its mined and the runoff is atrocious.
Some get rich. Others get lung disease. My wifes uncles died a horrible death. His lungs were glued to his rib cage. Opening his thorax the surgeons ripped huge pieces of tissue apart, threw up their hands and sewed him back up to die a long slow death. I was there at his bed side many times. I told his son that it was time to let Jerry go. Jerry was begging to be let go. His wife said no.
We let Jerry go. He was born and raised in a coal mining town in S. Illinois. He served in the navy and raised 4 strong boys. Yet he couldn't get black lung payments.I drove him to Lexington for the tests. He was denied. He died of it.
Most here did not see those days. I did. I don't want the mountains and our precious land to be destroyed for naught.
Lets not pretend we have time and the environment to piss away any longer.
Airdale-read The Coal Tattoo by Silas House and his other books. Its an education on the social level in E. Ky. in the mining country where our very heritage is being totally destroyed.
Bleed, you poor ape.
Do I bleed with you?
Yes.
Every solution must be applied. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors are good.
If we manage to widen the bottleneck then, in order to avoid ground hog day, changes will have to be made.
To us.
Eugenetics.
Wrest control from Lady Luck. (She ain't no lady.)
A lot less brain stem. A lot less Limbic system. Increase of cortex. Widen spinal column to accomodate. Aversion to alchol.
Experiment while human life is cheap.
Or leave the design of the Son of Man to the females.
No telling what you will get then.
Less bleeding, I want.
Thank you Arthur, I think,
Yes I bleed. Daily for my country. For my nation. For the people.
I bled when they pulled my left kidney out covered with a huge cancerous tumor. I laid there and realized it might come back.The cancer. Later I screamed as I lay on the floor at my farm and the kidney stones in the remaining right kidney were dealing me tremendous pain and agony. Morphine was my solace then. Straight to the veins and another operation on a kidney that was the only one I had left. Life can get rather real at times like this.
I gave some of the nurses kisses for their concern. They hugged me back. I went home laughing. Bleeding like an ape.
Right now it could be metastasizing and I might be a dead man walking but each day I hope. I wake up and slowly realize that I have perhaps limited time on earth.
Yes I bleed. But I will not cry.
I read here for hope. I wish for something so if I die it won't be with the world shutting down around me.
Melodramatic. But cancer can do things to your mind. It plays with you. It tells you little things in the dark of the night.
I wouldn't speak of it but your post was on that order. Or were you mocking?
Airdale
Thirra: Unfortunately,every time nuclear is mentioned it brings out a sort of Pavlovian reaction in certain people.They will seldom argue the case on practical grounds but go into paroxysms of rage,including the doomer variety as we have seen in this thread.To the latter I can only say that life,on the personal level, is optional.Others believe that we have to keep trying using the skills and infrastructure which we have.Scepticism is healthy,throwing in the towel is not,and is usually not seriously considered by those who have children.
This is a classic encapsulation of the misunderstanding at work within the pro-growth mindset.
Firstly there has been next to no 'nuclear is inherently evil' verbiage on the thread, and certainly no pavlovian iterations of it.
Secondly, the bulk of concern hinges around the qualitative social and ecological consequences of maintaining or increasing high energy supply volumes and centralisation of its capital ownership.
Thirdly, there is nothing doomer about seeking a much lower energy plane for socio-economic function. There is ample evidence suggesting that it is mindless doom-seeking to maintain high energy levels simply because the import and complexity of the consequences can't be fully fathomed let alone reliably managed. The apparently low level of awareness and concern toward this range of impact by many posters on this thread is testament to the deficiency. Naive or wilful ignorance is no salvation.
Invoking Liebig's Law, if all other resources were infinite, and they most certainly are not, the lowest plank on the growth barrel would be the human capacity to manage complexity. Our energy rich endeavor is voraciously eroding an immensely productive, dynamically balanced natural system. One that evolved us and can reliably sustain us. We are relentlessly replacing it with a dubiously motivated, designed-on-the-fly synthetic system to which we have to provide ALL of the energy and maintenance. As this task gets larger and more complicated, and as we have less of the original balance and bounty to draw subsidy from, it will become inevitably impossible. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we have seem to have no clue nor modesty toward the limits of our capacity and the consequences of failing at those absolute limits.
The technology we have to find is the switch that can re-align our sense of identity to another set of aspirations and satisfactions, away from mindless consumption and needless competition for power and toward more simple, more intrinsic values. There is no shame in this if life is viewed as something fuller and deeper than a contest of linear achievement.
The plain but popularly invisible fact is that most of us lose at the current game. Let the credit storm blow a few more months and let's see how far up the first world embankment the poverty swell surges. Yet we can't have our growth machine without debt. Our aspiration requires us to commit our lives to the service and to the inevitable retribution of this monster. Why play a life-game that only a few amongst billions can win, and then only in brevity and loneliness? Because we are robots and can't think or dream otherwise?
Charles - "and shipped arounf the country by a highly centralized smart grid system using highly centralized HVDC lines. "
Obviously you have a problem with the concept of decentralised energy. HVDC links allow energy to flow from remote centers where the energy is abundant however the caveat is "only when it is needed". The concept of smart grids is to use local generation first. If your rooftop PV is generating enough power, or the local storage node has plenty of juice there is no need to go off and get power from the remote station. Even then with storage at the end nodes you will be only going to the end station rather than the remote energy source. Also with a well meshed system you can draw power from multiple sources and also switch off loads intelligently that can be switched off.
You solution favours very large central power stations that need very little meshing. Again it is a supply side solution when what we require is demand side solutions before thinking of new supplies.
Sort of an interesting side debate. Ender wants efficiency, and, wind and solar, yet in the US today it is, basically, a fully 100% centralized industry. ALL wind is built on huge *centralized* wind farms (thank god, I don't want 'em anywhere near my house) and, using utility owned, state regulated high voltage lines, sent to where it's needed. If either wind or CSP is mentioned, it is *automatically* highly centralized...despite Ender's please for non-centralized renewable energy.
Grid Integrated PV (GIPV) is the latest and greatest. They cost from $15,000 to $30,000 depending if it's self-installed (DYI) or by installers and of course, usually you don't pay that much, I help pay for it via my taxes. Regardless, it is done in total conjunction WITH the big, regulated, highly centralized utility, in my case, Pacfic Gas and Electric. And, it only supplies name place capacity for about 3 to 4 hours a day, and lesser KWs a few hours on each side. Thank goodness PG&E provides ALL the power the rest of the time.
The 'smart grid' 'decentralized' power generation is a fantasy. It is not the way 'renewables', even the ones that are actually on line, work. Not in California, not in Denmark, no where. And... "not in 10 years". So you can forget about it, it's not happening.
The biggest so-called 'renewable' source of power in the US today, outside of hydro (wickedly centralized systems those) is wind power, as noted above, HIGHLY centralized. HVDC by default is highly centralized as it represents utility owned, SCADA-run, highvoltage essentially between two points. The Chinese are building the largest HVDC lines from 3 Gorges Dam.
Both 'smart grid'/enhanced SCADA and HVDC make more sense wheeling vast amounts power around, most of which is *going to be* coal, natural gas and nuclear. I want to see the nuclear side, eventually, cancel the fossil side of that equation.
David
Rooftop PV's do not generate power 24 hours a day. Either you need electrical storage - batteries or capacitors - and they are quite expensive. Infact the cost of PV's plus storage turns out to me more expensive than nuclear per KW of 24 hour a day electrical capacity, and far more expensive that LFTRs. Without storage you need PV;s to be hooked up to a grid, and electricity from the grid has to come from somewhere else. Cloudy days and winters also pose problems for decentralized PVs. Current advisories for people contemplating the purchase of stand alone PV systems suggest fossil fuel powered generator backup for such PV systems. So much for PV electrical generation being both distributive and clean!
I find it hard to imagine PV's being a base electrical system for a nation wide distributive electrical generation system.
Charles,
How many thorium reactors can be built by 2050? We need net ZERO carbon by then. Thorium gonna get us there?
NO.
Thorium for space ships? OK. For the next century? OK. But deploying thorium reactors on a large scale now is
1. impossible because it doesn't actually exist and
2. not useful (pointed out above) to poor societies
and
3. would draw funds away from what CAN get us to zero net by 2050.
All in all, a BAD short-term solution.
I wonder what the Liegig's is for reactors? Steel? Water? Locations?
Cheers
ccpo. I assume that mass production of LFTRs coupled with inovative approaches to site location and construction, most of the world's greatly expanded energy supply can come from LFTRs by 2050. The biggest obsticle is not building and setting up the reactors but ib finding the fissionabe material needed to start them. Nuclear armed nations wwill probably be forced to give up most or all of their weaopons in order to make the effort work. But eben then we probaly will not have enough U-235 and Pu-239 to make this work, without resorting to Lasar uranium enrichment on a massive scale. This would of course lead to proliferation concerns, and far stronger proliferations controls would need to be put in place before the technology gets transfered to areas with unstable leadership, for example Alaska.
I rather doubt this. Spent PWR fuel is roughly 0.8-1% plutonium, so 5 core's worth of spent PWR fuel should have more than enough fissionables to start another reactor of similar power density (perhaps several reactors of much higher power density). The USA appears to have enough chemically-separable fissionables in spent PWR fuel to double our generation overnight, if the reactors were available to use it.
That would do for a start. Afterward we would have the exponential breeding capacity of the MSRs themselves (up to 9%/year) plus the on-going stream of spent fuel from PWRs for another 60 years or so. Fluorinate it to convert the uranium to UF6 and remove it, distill the remaining salts to remove the fission products, and what's left should have a high fraction of Pu, Am and other stuff that's nasty to have hanging around but should make good fuel. Once it's in an LFTR or other MSR, it is destroyed. End of problem.
The United States has enough fissionable start up materials to power up most of its LFTRs, but India and even China will be a problem. It will take a lot of new U-235 and Pu-239 to get Indian LFTRs going. And China will need an enormous amount, even if it sacrifices all of its nuclear weapons.
Being kind of hard on our pagent girl aren't ya?
A few Alaskan's could still be miffed about the nuke blown harbor plans at Point Hope (you remember-the test run plans to show feasibility of a sea level canal in Panama}and Amchitka but most of us, like the other oil producers, are looking for ways to keep from burning up what we export. Investing in LFTR tech R/D and production work sounds like a lot better use for our permanent fund capital than the stock market, too bad there is no mechanism to channel it that way.
Somewhat impolite of me Charles, I first should have thanked you for the very clear LFTR presentation and for staying involved in the very enlightening conversation which followed.
I must show my ignorance here, but I am mere citizen not a nuke. Toshiba wants to put a 4S Liquid Sodium Cooled Reactor in Galena, AK as a U.S. pilot project. What relationship does the tech they are planning to use bear to that used in an LFTR?
Luke H,
Not very much. Liquid core reactors have many advantages over the solid core technology Toshiba proposes.
Thanks. I googled around and picked up a little. I'm guessing the waste stream from the solid core would be dirtier than from a liquid core but that didn't just jump out of what I read. LFTR seems to be the cleanest nuclear power I've read about to date, not counting fusion which, if we ever manage to slow it down, is supposed to have no radioactive waste or is that and oversimplification as well.
Fusion will have nuclear waste from irradiating everything with neutrons. Fusion won't have high level nuclear fuel waste.
Fusion will have high level component/equipment waste. But from what I understand it's not long lived.
I'm not worried about the tiny amount of waste an LFTR would produce. The chloride reactor has variants that produce no fuel waste at all. But LFTR looks more promising all things considered. Maybe there will be a few 'waste eating' reactors to complement a fleet of LFTR - the system cost should be low even if the waste eating reactors are expensive since few would be needed with the efficiency of LFTR.
The LFTR is very different. A different 'paradigm' so to speak. Really a completely different architecture.
I want to address two things. The philosophy of human advancement and how to view electricity. The second, on the LFTR specifically.
I agree with Charles Barton in his response on limitless energy. I view this as 'hope'. I'm not for starvation because I think there are too many people in the world; I would prefer education and rising living standards as a way to combat 'overpopulation'. I think if we start with limitless 'things' then we have to also educate ourselves on how to deal with this. Fishing was considered 'limitless' until we learned better after destroying fish stocks. Now they are managed. Human can, and have, learned. To get the world out of the morass it is in, we can't start by institutionalizing poverty, which is what it means when we don't have the electricity to provide the *material* basis for developing economy.
I have no problem with automobiles, even though I prefer mass transit. My problem is with the carbon emanating from said autos. If we switch to electric cars, along with high speed trains and maybe synthesized diesel fuel (Di methyl ether) all produced from the high temperatures of a LFTR, why is this BAD???? Moreover, why can't we expect people in poorer parts of Africa and Asia not emulate this? Why would we not? Especially if the energy to power it is not something to fight over; is not a cause of energy scarcity.
On the LFTR.
1. The LFTR can produced on ONE TON of unenriched thorium, 1 GW Year of power. That is one ton over one year. A LWR uses about 33 tons enriched uranium fuel a year for the same amount of power. The Th is simply 'milled' to get rid of the dirt and spoil, leaving pure Th. You mix, say, approx 7lbs of it in some liquid fluoride and *pour* it into the fuel stream. Once a day. That is it.
2. Thorium abundance. The survey quote above is actually out of date. Thorium Power has a reserve in Idaho of 600,000 tons proven (30%, I believe, pure Th oxide). They believe that their is another 1.5 million tons available. So, point one above, 1 ton = 1 GW year. You do the math. The US government has over 3000 tons of refined Th in cans buried in Nevada. This is enough Th to power 100 1 GW reactors for 30 years.
3. "Breeding". All LWRs breed some. The LFTR can breed slightly more U233 than it uses, enough that every 9 years or so, a whole new load of U233 can be siphoned off as a start up charge for a new LFTR. At the end of, say, a 60 to 80 year run of a LFTR, the amount of U233 in the salt stream can be bottled up and used in a brand new LFTR. And so on, ad infinitum.
4. Waste. My favorite. 1 ton of Thorium IN, 1 ton of Spent Thorium Fuel out. In 60 years it would produce 60 tons. That would, maybe, fill up my living room. Probably not. As the papers Charles notes explain, since most of the nasties in the STF can be chemically removed because the fuel is in a liquid state to begin with, and the fissionable re-injected into the fuel stream, fission products removed, and overall anticide and transuranic nasty material is extremely limited in its production, if any...the expected danger of these wastes bound up in the STF is only dangerous out to 300 years, not the 100,000 years expected from the waste of a LWR (I believe it is fact closer to 10,000 years but that's another discussion and completely irrelevant anyway).
5. Because of use of inert gas as coolant (via a heat exchanger) we can use gas turbines instead of steam turbines. Due to the known differences in efficiencies, the gas turbine is close to 50% efficient (as opposed to the steam turbine's 33%). This means we can *reduce the size* of the turbine by about the same amount: less materials = cheaper. It also means that we don't need nearly as big a temperature drop from the outlet of the turbine. Ergo, no big cooling towers or big condensers that use hundreds of thousands of gallons a minute of cooling water. We can use air cooled condensers without much of an efficiency it.
6. The since the temperature of the outlet of turbine is high we can use that high gas temperature to employ flash-distillers to crack fresh water from sea water if we wanted to.
7. We can use some of the hot gas at the front end of the turbine to run a hydrogen distillation plant; or divert this to even greater quantiies of fresh water from sea water; or, and this is what we really expect the LFTR to be used for: process heat for chemical plants, for aluminum plants, for anything that takes vast quanties of heat nomally produced by burning coal or coke or natural gas.
And...that is just to start...there is more!
Given the architecture of the LFTR is is completely scalable. From 10 MWs of heat to 1800 MWs of power. We can factory produce (see Charle's blog at nuclear green) 100 MW reactors and *stack* them where we need them. We can easily bury them underground and they wouldn't even show up as you drive by them (who WOULD you hit something in the ground with an airplane?). Very important: since the LFTR is NOT a pressurized water reactor and the fuel stream exists in atmospheric pressure *everything* can be built to industrial specs in factories without the huge wall thicknesses of containment, pipes, etc etc. The bottom line is that we fully expect the modern LFTR to be less than half the cost of a modern Generation III LWR.
We can place the LFTR almost anywhere that is socially and community acceptable to do so. We can, for example, and both Charles and I have talked about this on our blogs, use the LFTR to replace a coal plant AT a coal plant site. 1 MW of coal replaced with 1 MW of thorium produced power.
Isn't this a "good thing"? Write you Congress person today. Write the NEW Dept. of Energy. Make your voice heard!
David
dwalters - "The LFTR is very different. A different 'paradigm' so to speak. Really a completely different architecture. "
Before you gush anymore over LFTR reactors lets summerise the current position. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Currently operating commercial LFTR reactors - 0
Current operational experience with LFTR - 0
Pilot LFTR reactors - 0
Remember that nuclear one day would "be too cheap to meter" so lets take your projections with a grain of salt until you have at least 10 years of a operating LFTR reactor under your belt. Then take a look at your predictions and see how many of them are true.
Assuming that you could produce them on a production line can you ensure quality? Are the required material needed for the high temperatures available at a reasonable cost. How long do cost effective material last at the high temperatures of the reactor? What happens when the operator in Haiti drops something and damages the reactor (remember your reactors are going to be everywhere).
While LFTR is an unknown as yet renewables by contrast are going from strength to strength. If the cost of renewables is about the same as an LFTR power solution why should anyone now back an unknown rather than technology that is in use today and can be scaled up to the required size?
Two very sucessful Liquid salt prototypes were built in the 1950's and 1960's. Iet me remind you of the Manatten project record. On December 1, 1942 thaere were no operating reactors in the worold. A year later there were two. The next year there were 4 and the year after that 8. It is not a very good argument to count the number of reactors operating and convlud anything much from the fact there are 0 this year. The more automated the production of reactors the less the likelyhood of human errors. Automation saves labor and lowers production costs, as well asw improving quality. C
Extensive materials research was doen in oakridge betwen 1950, and 1976. There have been substantial advances in material sciences since. you needer operate a reactor without knowing the long term effe4cts of opearations on reactor matereials. That is why scientists do materials testing. That is why development takes time. The LFTR is far from unknown. i have suffested placing LFTRs in terrorism proof underground chambers. The LFTr has the following advantages ovr renewables. It can supply power on demand. It can load follow. it produces power on windless nights. It soes not produce less power on cloudy days. I should not have to continue.
Charles - "The LFTr has the following advantages ovr renewables. It can supply power on demand. It can load follow. it produces power on windless nights. It soes not produce less power on cloudy days. I should not have to continue."
Yes material science has progressed however until you have experience operating an LFTR all your claims are just vaporware. Yes they might be the best thing since sliced bread however equally they might be a white elephant siphoning off scarce resources when the real solution is under our nose.
Renewables load follow, they also produce power on windless nights and cloudy days. Renewables have advanced as well. They have cost effective storage both thermal and electrical they also have geographical diversity with HVDC links and supply diversity with wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal and biomass all combining. They are also scalable with exactly the same technology from village to city and can be deployed in the Republic of Congo (and are being deployed) with no risk whatsoever. There is also much more chance of the people in the Republic on Congo producing their own renewables in cottage industries (as is already happening) and taking their destiny into their own hands for a change.
So on one hand we have a vaporware product that could be a white elephant compared with another product in place and operating with over 20 years of operational experience behind at least 2 of the technologies.
Honestly, assuming you had little knowledge of either, which would you choose?
On the load following just what will be the operational model of a large nuclear power plant operating 2 hours a day? Also what will the thermal shocks of starting and stopping do to the reactor?
Ender, A practical renewable system thartproduces electricity on demand is not even a practical concept yet. Solar and wind systems do not yet have reliable energy storage systems, and thus are limited by natural factors. Geothermal systems appear to not be sustainable. Steam pressure and power output dropps over time. The environmental consequences as well as the sustainability of hot rock geothermal is as of yet poorly understood. So at present there is noo economically viable 24 hour a day, seven day a week renewable system of producing electricity on demand.
As for the claim that the LFTR is vapor ware, all post carbon energy systems that claim 24 hour a day energy production except conventional nuclear are vaporware by this standard. The claim that renewables could supply energy on demand 24 hours a day, is also vaporware. The term vaporware is a blanket term, and fails to assess potential technology for likelihood of success. LFTR technology was sufficiently advanced in OAK Ridge by the 1970's that building on Oak Ridge accomplishment has a high likelihood of success.
You write,
This statement reflects a failure to understand LFTR technology. The LFTR has a negative coefficient of reactivity. That means that you can shut it doen by rasing coore heat. Thus LFTRs can be placed in hot shutdown mode, and begin to producepower as fast as turbines can be spun up to generating speed. There is no thermal shock, because the LFTR will be as hot as it ever gets when it is in shut down mode. With the LFTR a drop of temperature increases power output. Your mistake is to assume that the LFTR is like other reactors, ande you continue to make it despite having been told that this is not the cae.
As for LFTRs in the Congo, future political arrangements are impossible to foresee, but the emergence of LFTR technollogy in the United States does not mean that LFTRs are going to be arriving in the Congo any time soon. The first customers for LFTR technology would be energy hungry countries and areas. This would include nuclear power like the United States, Russia, China and India. Countries that possess the technological where with all to already build nuclear weapons would most likely be included on the list. This would include Japan, non-nuclear EU states, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and a number of other technologically advanced countries. The Congo most likely would not make the cut because of its current political instability. But even if the Congo were given LFTR technology, a number of political and/or technical barriers to proliferation could accompany it.
Ah. So, the poor don't need energy. Let them eat cake! And burn dung!
Bah...
You can't expect every solution to work for everyone.
Gail,
I was only making the (admittedly snarky) point that solutions that are not global aren't really solutions.
Cheers
ccpo - "solutions that are not global aren't really solutions" - rubbish!
One size never fits all.There will be local solutions to local problems but the technology used will likely be avaiable to all.
Actually, the Congo is a good example.They have a huge hydro resource without having to build much of a dam.
I was a bit clumsy. Let me put it this way: how many nations would this tech help even if it were viable? What percentage of the planet? It's being presented as the savior of the planet. Within that context, I don't think my comment was unfair.
And that tech is EXPENSIVE. What about current fiscal realities? Only Big Business can build these. It's not "scalable" in that sense.
Etc.
Short-term, it's not a solution. It's not even a band aid except in exceptional cases. Korea? Send a couple ASAP. And a couple is all you're going to get on an ASAP time line.
So... I get tired of nuclear being hailed as the greatest new/old thing. It's expensive and has only ever been financed by public money.
I'm not impressed.
Like I've said: maybe in 50 or 100 years it might be significant, but not between now and 2050. I'd be very surprised.
Cheers
This tech helps those countries that consume significant amounts of energy.
It is quite cheap per kWh. That is what really counts.
Nothing is. But realistically, nuclear is the only solution.
Hydro isn't suitable for every country either, but if that meant noone should have developped and built hydrodams, then projects like the Hooverdam wouldn't be replacing X tons of coal on a continuous basis.
Every coal-fired power plant that gets replaced IS part of a solution, as long as the alternative is better. And it's hard not to improve on burning coal, given our set of problems.
IF Thorium-based reactors are as good as foretold, then each one built means a bit less struggle for fossil fuels. That in and of itself is a positive thing.
Why not - renewables do. It is the more expensive and exotic technologies that don't. Perhaps we need to think about this before creating two tiers of energy. There are already enough divisions in the world without creating a new one.
This is a cute but overly general statement. Sometimes renewable energy sources are the more expensive and exotic technologies, for example cellulosic ethanol. In Kinshasa, where power and telephone lines are regularly cut and stolen, I don't see small renewable power tech, like PV solar, lasting very long before being "reallocated". Even large renewable tech, like hydro, is not exactly flourishing in the DRC, even though they have an incredible hydro resource at Inga (twice Three Gorges = Six Gorges?). The people of DRC need something much more elusive than an effective power technology, they need a stable society. I think this idea of a single tier/global energy solution implicitly assumes an unrealistic homogeneity in the human condition.
Maybe a lot of the doomer dissent on this thread is based on concerns that stable society is now on the retreat worldwide, and any investment we make now will build power plants that must function in a future that could look like anything from Mad Max to Buck Rogers. Uncertainty is paralyzing.
Ahh, you're just hoping...
That's an interesting question: are these reactors intrinsically safe? The benefit of burning off existing waste stockpiles is attractive, but do these reactors run the risk of meltdown or radiation leak?
A liquid core reactor has already melted down, and the meltdown is seen as an good thing. The LFTR has several very attractive intrinsic safety features. but those features should be backed up by a system of barriers to radiation release. Such a system is both possible and not particularly expensive. Given a full deployment of all reasonable safety fetures, the likelihood of massive loss of life from natural disasters would be far greater than the likelihood of a single casualty from a LFTR related accident.
He means the solid parts of the reactor, which really are supposed to remain solid. It looks like the reaction physics keep themselves under control. Although some minor core damages cannot be avoided 100%, this is only a minor economics problem as long as the chances of it are very low (current reactor systems have already proven this).
The system does appear to be meltdown proof.
To expand on what Charles said, the active core of a Molten Salt Reactor is liquid inside a structure which serves as a moderator and neutron reflector. If this liquid gets too hot, expansion reduces its density and the amount of material in the core; this reduces the reactivity and slows the reaction, all the way to a halt if cooling is not restored. The system is passively safe and cannot exceed temperature limits set by the design.
MSR designs have also incorporated a freeze plug in a drain at the bottom of the reactor vessel. If this plug isn't cooled, the plug melts and the entire contents of the reactor drain by gravity to storage tanks. That's a backup for the backup.
Engineer-Poet, you are giving away the plot of my second post!
That's what I was hoping to hear about. If these can be made meltdown-proof, their appeal grows even more.
And all you weasel rats have been stealing the themes and metaphors I intended to use in my letter to Obama, so there. ;-)
There is, of course, no such thing as limitless energy, at least not within the biosphere ... the question is rather what the limits are. If the supply is effectively unlimited, that only means that the limits will rather be in assimilation capacity.
Indeed, consider the analogy offered:
As a regional economist, I quite definitely have a problem with the publicly subsidized "private" auto-centric transportation system. It is embedded in a system of cross subsidies for sprawl development that has increased the proportion of the population living in the subsidized system, and that places greater and greater strain on the economy as the numbers requiring subsidy increase and the numbers available to provide the cross subsidy decline.
Independent of the CO2 emissions is the problems with imported energy dependency, independent of both of those is the problems of unsustainable land use, independent of those three is the steadily increasing average VMT and corresponding progressive sacrifice of leisure time to the service of the auto-centric transport system.
And at its heart is an intrinsically unsustainable political economy, with the gains to property developers relying on the increasing share of sprawl development and the increasing share of sprawl development undermining the system of cross subsidies that it relies upon.
So, returning from that sprawling reflection on the unsustainable character of the auto-centric settlement system that is at the heart of the dominance of the car for transport, in terms of the steady state social and ecological sustainability of thorium energy supply, question number one seems fair straightforward:
Can we develop a technology that we would feel comfortable being put to use in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with its running provincial rebellions and rampant corruption, or the Sudan, with its tendency to look for ways to make inconvenient sub-Saharan citizens disappear?
Is so, that is a potentially sustainable nuclear power system, and given the urgent need to start decommissioning large numbers of coal fired power plants sometime within the next two decades, an avenue well worth exploring at full commercial urgency.
Bruce, I have no disagreement with sustainability, but you really ought to pay attention. I have argued that a thorium based energy economy would be sustainable for at least several million yeasr and probably a lot longer, depending on the elective choices of future civilizations. I am not going to argue about what people in the future ought to do. You ask,
This is, I must say, a rather silly argument. Is it an argument against the existence of ammonia fertilizer, that it might be weaponized in the Congo or by rebels in the Sudan? If we feel uncomfortable about any advanced technology falling into the wrong hands, we ought to make preventing that a matter of policy, not by blocking technical progress.
Nations like North Korea and South Africa have demonstrated exactly how easy proliferation is, using old and fairly low tech routes. Would be proliferators are far more likely to choose the North Korean route, or a variation if the South African route, rather than following a more technologically challenging LFTR route. Proliferation researchers are increasingly aware of the ned to create political barriers to nuclear proliferation, rather than imagining that proliferation can be prevented through limiting nuclear power technological developments.
Bruce
Thank you for that excellent summary of a complex, pervasive but nearly invisible force driving a large proportion of our troubles.
That the energy peddlers are either oblivious to or disinterested in your observation of this ultimately untenable force is revealing. Without conscious change, which is nowhere in sight even now that the housing bubble has shat in the economic nest, it is this core socio-economic form that the silver bullet will be used to energise. Cities burgeoning with ever more people, paying ever more for ever more scarce space and water.
Why and what for?
An utterly vital question that no-one wants to even talk about.
Let's just do it!
More power. Now!
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a sustainable power supply. But to be so it has to employed in a sustainable purpose, which necessarily is deployed at a sustainable threshold.
I would just note that the main reason that many sub-Saharan citizens disappear (eg. Sudan) is because many factions are fighting over the valuable petroleum resources over which they have long been accustomed to farming. If WE stop buying the petroleum, the cause of friction may at least be greatly reduced.
Someone who knows little about the current state of the world's fisheries, I see.
To mamba,
I was not too much in favor of the rating system.
Now I can't wait for it to return.
Airdale
He's right regarding fisheries though.
Airdale, you are now cyberstalking my posts and you're an idiot to boot. From the Economist:
I was commenting on the tone of your post. You reply was way way up thread so that the context was lost.
I thought it was a cherry picking jab.
I just made a post about my thoughts on coal. Some can disagree but going into a long winded thread about coal is not appropriate IMO.
There are many facets to the energy problem. Fish and environment is something I am tuned into as well and speak openly about but we are discussing LFTR. Fish are not energy related expect perhaps somewhat indirectly.
Again it was the tone. A frivolous shot.
But why all this hue and cry about a technology that might be hugely important? Dissension for the sake of dissension? I am a full out doomer in doomer mode but I will veer sharply on something of this nature if it can save us. The fish we can address after we have a planet to fish on and people to throw a line in the water.
Airdale
And BTW my comment on coal and destruction was somewhat OT..so call me on it if you wish. I would not argue with you on that. But coal,like I said is energy and fish in the ocean are not.
And further I did not resort to name calling like you.
Airdale: Fish and environment is something I am tuned into as well and speak openly about but we are discussing LFTR. Fish are not energy related expect perhaps somewhat indirectly.
Fish are a direct energy source - its called food.
The eco-system they play an integral part in is also an energy source, in fact the most significant one of all.
As such their possible displacement is a critical factor in the net evaluation of this new energy technology.
Will it help protect them - there's no clear plan as to how.
Will it help destroy them - by maintaining a confident horizon for business as usual it arguably signs their death warrant.
Again it was the tone. A frivolous shot.
It was a reasonable technique to make an important point without onerous post detail and length. The point is that real and serious impacts of highly energised, highly mobile, highly ambitious society are being frivolously and ignorantly dismissed. A litany of perceptual oversights and errors riddle the pro-growth postings on this thread. It becomes cumulatively annoying, especially as these views are propelled by their popularity rather than any rigorous audit. An irony given the nature of the thread don't you think?
But why all this hue and cry about a technology that might be hugely important? Dissension for the sake of dissension? I am a full out doomer in doomer mode but I will veer sharply on something of this nature if it can save us. The fish we can address after we have a planet to fish on and people to throw a line in the water.
The feasibility of your plan is moot at best. "Just give us more power now and we will fix things later". Yeah, sure.
I am not in disagreement with your sensibilities, but I do think if Thorium turns out to be more expensive than renewables, it will still have an important place. Because of the time variability issues relating to renewables (excepting geo-thermal), the nuclear component doesn't need to be cheaper per KWhr than the time varying generation component, it only has to be cheaper than the cost of the later, plus the cost of storing energy. I think it is highly likely that a developed Thorium power capability would fall in between these two price limits. If so, by providing a rock solid baseline, it would be an enabler of, rather than competition for the renewables sector. Otherwise we will probably end up with natural gas peaking style plants to cover renewables generation shortfalls. And I don't think the NG supply will remain large enough to do that for more than two to three decades. We might be able to use NG, as a bride, until fullscale development of Thorium baseline power is complete, but it would be folly to commit to it as a longterm solution. Worse we would probably hang on to coal longer, endangering our climate even further.
What we really need is comprehensive research into EROI of all of the above. At present, we know the boring stuff like putting more insulation in the attic and riding a bicycle has the best EROI. But at the most fundamental level, what we really need is Deliberative Democracy so that we can begin to talk about this stuff and actually see the best ideas float to the top and get acted on.
To understand the EROEI of thorium you have to realized that each fission event produces 200 Million eVs of energy. One pound of thorium is the energy equivlent of 5000 tons of coal. Ironically there is 31 pounds of throrium in the 5000 tons of coal. So if you extracted the thorium and through away the coal instead of the other way around, you could have an EROEI for thorium that would be 31 times the EROEI of coal. Coal is, by the way, far from the best source of thorium. Since there is a lot of thorium in mine tailings, thorium for the next several thousand years can be extracted almost energy free. if you doubt me do the math yourself.
I don't doubt you, but we also have to consider the energy needed to develop and build these things. (Also the political willpower). I'm cautiously optimistic, but whether they'll ever get off the ground is a good question.
What's political willpower got to do with EROEI?
Hi Ender,
I agree with your philospophy on renewables.
On a technical point though:
Most people don't realise the role played by the angular momentum of the spinning Earth itself. This is the main power source that drives the Tides. As this rotational energy is expended, every year the Earth spins slightly more slowly, by about one "leap second", and amazingly the enormous mass of the Moon is *accelerated* and moves a few centimetres away from the Earth each year.
(Some background discussion here http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/williams_cospar_2004.pdf.)
Also for the wind (which drives the waves), the spinning of the Earth cycles the atmosphere through its daily exposure to the radiant energy of the Sun. The steady rotation of the Earth also induces the swirling (in opposite directions in each hemisphere) of the weather patterns (Coriolis acceleration).
The Earth's angular momentum is slowly degraded by the surface drag effects of these induced winds (plus the drag of circulating ocean currents, and the tides mentioned above).
Our weather is much more energetic as a result of the spinning Earth. (Compared to say Venus, which although exposed to higher levels of Solar radiation, has a daily rotation 166 times slower than ours, and a much more boring weather.
"Also there are another resources that are abundantly available in completely limitless quantities that require no mining to obtain. They are wind, sun, tide and waves. All are powered from the sun and in the case of tides the moon and are expected to last 500 million years if our present theories of star formation and lifetime are correct. Why solve the problem with methadone for centuries when we have the chance to solve it forever by kicking the habit? We can now setup up future generations with limitless power rather then handing them the problem of what to do in centuries when the available thorium runs out."
Again, this comes back to the 'perpetual growth in a finite environment' problem. I agree with your sentiments. Personally, I believe that anyone who still believes in endless economic growth for any portion of humanity, should be looking for ways of leaving the planet and heading out into space. That universe is the only environment large enough to sustain those sorts of aspirations for geological timescales.
Back to the here and now, the problem that you will face attempting to champion renewable energy sources over nuclear, is that the low capacity factor, limited power density and intermittency of renewables, mean that the EROI for renewable energy sources is dramatically lower than most nuclear concepts and this is especially the case for breeders. You therefore face the problem of trying to persuade people to abandon an energy source that costs 1x per kilowatt hour for another energy source that costs 4x per kilowatt hour. In doing so, you will also be forcing people to accept lower living standards, as more expensive energy means less energy per capita and thus will equate to lower living standards. To successfully argue for this, opponents need to have very strong arguments against nuclear and for renewables.
So far, at least from my perspective, these arguments appear spurious and poorly thought through. They rely upon overplaying problems like nuclear waste and nuclear accident risk and underplaying the problems of low-EROI, often high environmental costs and high embedded energy of renewables.
Where to start?
Firstly, I am a huge fan of renewable power and wrote a short piece on yesterday's drumbeat about some ways the UK could go about getting over the intermittency of wind. I believe the financial bailouts we are seeing (I am not sure how you bailout an organisation that is already effectively dead..) are largely a monstrous waste of taxpayers' money which would be better used retrofitting insulation, retrofitting CHP to FF power plants with some reasonable remaining shelf-life, subsidising solar thermal applications at a domestic level, building a wind turbine manufacturing business in the UK, etc, etc, etc.
However, I think it is disingenuous to say that "there are another resources that are abundantly available in completely limitless quantities that require no mining to obtain. They are wind, sun, tide and waves". It requires mining to produce all the (significant) inputs (steel, etc) required to build these on the scale required. It requires mining to produce all the copper required for the new transmission systems that would be required, etc.
One of the benefits of thorium reactors given here is that they can be placed pretty much anywhere, which obviates the need for massive new transmission systems. They are scalable which means that they can be placed near the demand, they produce heat and thus can be used as CHP stations, rather than for purely power generation - northern European correlation for power and heat demand is high. They can be ramped up and down, which means they would be an accomodative technology for intermittent renewables. In summary, it is not a binary choice, we can have both if it makes sense to do so. If Charles is right about what thorium can do, it would not make sense to have both, we would just go with thorium, though clearly at great risk of placing all eggs in one technological basket.
As to the argument that we and, more importantly from my perpsective, future generations would be better off simply powering down, I do not disagree. The pursuit of endless growth and consumption is doomed to failure. However, I accept that, no matter what my personal beliefs, voluntary powerdwon is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. We will burn every last available drop, molecule and lump piece of oil, natural gas and coal before we, collectively, accept that it is not sustainable. That is the human condition, and no matter the number of well-intentioned people here on TOD, I do not see it changing. I foresee huge wars, famine, disease and societal breakdown as a result of people trying to get hold of that last drop of oil, grain of wheat, drop of water, piece of earth, etc. It saddens me and terrifies me (I have a six year old daughter) but I believe it is more likely to happen than not.
From that perspective, a technological fix like thorium might buy us hugely important breathing time to address issues of resource depletion and climate change. A fix that could close the energy gap on such a scale, as well as positively impacting on CO2 emissions might buy us the time to see and try to address other issues of over-population, top-soil shortages, NPK shortages, etc. I think we are on the brink of global disaster and that it is too late to avert some deeply unpleasant events, particularly in the developing world, but fast-tracking thorium R&D is a far better idea than CCS, IGCC, etc on the energy front, ant at least as productive as bank bailouts on the financial front (since that money is just being poured down the drain anyway).
I apologise for ranting at length, but it irks me when otherwise intelligent people adopt such binary positions on issues such as renewables/thorium. We owe it to future generations to do our best to provide solutions to the problems we and our forebears laid up for them and the planet. I assume it is fairly clear that I am what would be called a doomer, but I still hope that there might be some technology fix that allows to buy the breathing time to avert total collapse. Thorium might be one and, as such, we need to have a close look, because IF it does what Charles says it can, then it is better than anything else we have at present, other than voluntarily powering-down.
Well said.
It is indeed rather dismal that the debate is still very polarized, with a strong antagonist and protagonist camp.
But, with the LFTR, it looks to me that the debate is starting to become more constructive.
Given our short-term situation WRT natural gas, it makes no sense NOT to build wind like crazy for the next decade-plus.
The big question is what to do beyond that, and it appears to me that wind and molten-salt reactors are complementary. One of the difficulties with wind is the need for energy storage. Compressed air (CAES) has been proposed as a solution, but it requires a source of heat at the expansion stage.
MSRs can run hot enough to use gas turbines instead of steam turbines, and may even use open-cycle gas turbines with air to eliminate any need for cooling water. This would impose a substantial hit in thermal efficiency, but nuclear heat is so cheap the elimination of impact on streams and lakes might be worth it (gas turbines are quite inexpensive also). If the technology goes this way, it's just a small step to separate the air compression from the expansion and power generation and store compressed air. If the MSR can achieve 70% conversion [1] of output heat to electricity when supplied with compressed air, it could double its base output during peak periods. The air storage would be recharged from off-peak nuclear and wind, all GHG-free.
[1] Based on the CAES proposals I've read, some of the proponents are claiming 80% NG-to-electric efficiency on the expansion side. I don't know what turbine inlet temperature they're basing their claims on, so 70% seems like a good SWAG.
Overall a good post. I would just caution that the above includes an assumption which is not true for any electric grid I know of, which assumption is that adding wind generation to a grid reduces the natural gas consumption. In fact the net effect of adding wind to a grid is to reduce BASELOAD generation and increase PEAKING generation, meaning Natural gas consumprion goes way up, and some baseload coal or nuclear gets shut down.
I think that is exactly what he meant. Better gas+wind than coal.
Folks say that baseload plants can be regulated down to 70% power without taking a huge efficiency loss. Since a lot of the baseload power added recently has been from gas, wind will push gas consumption down even in the absence of coal.
Incorrect again. A baseload plant which may be rated for 45% efficiency at optimal loading will see a significant efficiency drop, and resulting increase in CO2 emissions per unit production, at 70% output.
Point is, this sort of calcultion needs to be done in each specific case, and no-one is doing it, simply assuming that a wind developer's claims are true.
len -if willing send us in a guest analysis/post on this topic. I would like to know more specifics.
Maybe, but in the example of an optimally run wind/gas grid, this is not a big deal. Not all gas turbines will be throttled strongly at the same time. A few percent throttling is not a significant efficiency drop for a modern gas turbine, not even for a combined cycle gas turbine. When more throttling is needed, one (or a few) gas units will throttle at the same time. When even more throttling is needed, yet another gas turbine throttles up. The other gas units can still run close to peak efficiency.
So when you have, say a 100 gas turbines to complement (say) a 100 wind farms, and the wind suddenly falls substantially, then not all the gas turbines will be throttled down, just enough to meet the load. If one or two or three have to be throttled at the same time to deal with the drop in wind production, then even at a large efficiency penalty, the other 97, 98, 99 will still operate close to peak efficiency. The grid takes advantage in modularity of it's units, and so the real efficiency penalty - in an optimally run grid - will be very small. While wind is variable, forecasting tools are very accurate on a day to day scale. And the combined output of many wind farms, while far from being stable baseload as some have claimed, does not incur such large variance in output on an hour-to-hour basis (eg you won't experience a sudden intrahour drop of 100% and then up again 100% ten times a day!)
Most combined cycle gas turbines are slightly less responsive than single cycle gas turbines, but we're talking about <10 minutes ramp rate, more than fast enough in a grid with lots of wind. For minute to minute storage, there are various proven energy storage devices available that may be more economic (especially when emissions are taken into account) and very useful in such grids.
I'll grant most of your points, though you've presented the absolute best-case scenario. However, that doesn't yet address the issue of wind substituting for large efficient baseload units in a circumstance where the dispatcher's choice is NOT "wind or a CCGT" but "wind or nuclear". Ontario is an excellent example.
Of course, I'll concede that it assumes perfect system functioning, which in the case of the US is not very realistic - think transmission restraints in our old crappy grid. All the more reason to do something (actually, a lot) about that old crappy grid then!
I'm more interested in inherent limits, but it looks like they rare quite high, if they are hard limits at all. So I consider an idealized model with sufficient grid capacity (but which does include the cost of larger distance transmission) to be a very good proxy.
Consider the reference I gave on the other page.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/53.DeCarolis.2002.IsTheAnswerBlowin...
If the baseload is inflexible or at least preferably run constantly (like nuclear is) then combining wind with nuclear by means of a CAES storage makes more sense - in particular because the rejected heat could, a priori, be used as a heat source input for the CAES system (saving even more natural gas). In fact, this may be the best combo for Ontario, and in many other places in the US as far as arbitrary combos go. Diabatic CAES is proven (many years operating experience with a large plant in Germany). It can absorb the electricity from wind and/or nuclear (whichever is in excess) that would otherwise be dumped from the system. The amount of dumped kWhs would be bigger in a system where there is nuclear rather than CCGT and GT - so CAES is more economical.
Want the real problem with thorium, or all, reactors? Time. I've said this elsewhere, but bears repeating give your post content. If you want to talk about thorium as a future bridge, or a future backbone... fine. Maybe it's the bee's knees. But right here, right now, it's not worth discussing except in terms of pretty far future.
1. A working design does not currently operate.
2. It will take significant time to perfect one.
3. It will take more time to build and shake down the first.
4. It will take much more time to build them out on both national and international levels.
I've previously stated I'd support limited nuclear use in places where it really is the best option. But, we ain't got the time to wait till thorium is ready to replace the backbone, so why pretend we do?
Cheers
CCPO, It would perhapsbe better to say that a working design id not currently operating. Does implies that one might exist but not work. It might be better to say that perfecting a working design would take a large number of human hours of labor. Time is probably more flexible than the labor input require to perfect the design. There are however short cuts that designers could take to test the system. Parts of the system could be tested before the whole system is built, and modeling allows important information that might bre found uncovered by testing, to be found by use of computers.
Finally the business as usual model would be to build the prototype, test it, and then move forward with the construction of production faacilities, but this is not the Manhattan Project Model. The Manhattan Project built the production facilities at the while the production process was being perfected. That approach saved a great deal of time. There is an economic rational for taking a Manhattan Project approach with the LFTR. The longer its deployment is delayed the greater the cost of global warming and oil depletion to society will become.
Huh? Dude, either there is a working, marketable design right now or there isn't. I am not interested in semantics. We ain't in debate class.
No, it is right to say it will take a long time, because it will.
Great! And? What does that get us? Not much. You are still talking years and possibly decades. While you can assume it will only take a few years, you just never know. This is why I would take known alternatives over unknown thorium in the short- and mid-term. If thorium doesn't work out while sucking a significant portion of the funds, we're screwed. Or someone is. It's not worth the risk. A small budget looking toward a long-term program, fine. Short-term? No. Don't see it.
Great! Given there are new wind generator designs that are essentially noiseless and work in turbulent winds and lots pf DIY windmills and solar heat/water/etc. stuff out there, I'd much rather go Manhattan on those things... that we *know* work.
$5k can get a combination of professional and DIY systems up and running in every household in the US. That's 500 billion. That's probably something on the order of 41 nuclear reactors. Certainly not more than a hundred. Let's see: every home with significant power/efficiency within a couple years, or wait ten years for development and five more for delivery of a *maybe.* And to a very small number of homes.
PLUS: - you are flooding Big Business with money. My idea would flood Avg. Joe with money.
- your plan gets power to a few in the next 10 - 20 years while mine gets power to everyone in 5 or less.
- my plan gets gov't and Big Business out of our pockets, your plan puts us in their pockets.
- mine is instant economic stimulus, your plan is... never a stimulus. Certainly not in terms of the current problems.
- mine builds community, your plan builds... power plants.
Etc., etc.
Sorry, this is a no-brainer stuff. Without far more compelling info, I'd not be much interested in your plan except in the long term. The very long term.
Cheers
What do you mean, "it will"? It took how many months for the squash-court reactor at UIC to be built? How long after that before a breeder was running at Hanford?
If we really need something, we have the technical capability to make it happen pretty darn quick. Given our situation, we'd build a few different designs and stress them to see which ones work best, then turn the top 1 or 2 options into standard designs built in factories and trucked to installation sites. (Why not just one design? Because we've got a bunch of different requirements of environment, ancillary services like industrial process heat, and so forth. No sense in leaving some segments of the economy dependent on fossil fuels indefinitely.)
Look, we already know it works; Shippingport ran for 5 years on a single load of fuel and finished the run with more fissionables than it started with. We tested the MSRE to prove the chemistry and other details; some tweaks were made in the alloys to fix problems. That's all done.
It can't suck up a huge fraction of our funds, either. Reactors just aren't that expensive, especially when you're using physics to guarantee safety instead of the unit's weight in paperwork (which is how it's done with aircraft). Maybe ten billion would get several test units and the start of a factory to crank them out like popcorn. After that they'd be cheap.
Should we be looking at research into unknown territory, that may not work? Take real risks? Sure. We should start the materials science on vessels, piping and pumps made of ceramic or carbon-carbon that can run at 900°C or higher. Once we have materials that look like they'll work, we should build a 5-10 MWth test reactor to shake out the problems; if it works, we can scale up to commercial size and start building those instead. But we don't have to wait for any of this; we can build reactors percolating away at 650°C with what we know today.
I live in a place that has sucky wind most of the time, and my back yard is surrounded by 80-foot trees. Wind isn't going to work too well here (believe me, I've looked for a place to put a tower and found no good candidates unless I remove most of those troublesome cottonwoods). Then there's the storage issue.
Best hopes for an MSR for Fermi III.
Simple solution.
MOVE.
Many will be forced to in the near future. Do it early so you can choose where you go.
Power Down.
I wnat to commend Gail for a very informative article. I had heard bits and pieces promoting Thorium from time to time, but never could figure out where the real meat (in terms of information was). It seems Gail has tracked it down for us, and done an incredible job of summarizing it for nonexperts. Thanks.
Charles wrote the article. All I did was give him a list of questions I was interested in.
A U.S. company called General Atomic produced two Uranium-Thorium reactors in the 1960s and 1970s. The first was a small prototype (40MW)built at Peach Bottom, PA. The second was built for Public Service of Colorado at Ft. St. Vrain and managed 330 MW. I worked on Ft. St. Vrain between 1971 and 1975.
Both have been dismantled for reasons other than fuel cycle issues.
OK..I will ask the question you left hanging in the air.
Why? What were those reasons?
Airdale
airdale, teh history of American nuclear technology research from 1969 onward was that of repeated cuts of investments in new technology. The NRC and the Energy Department are controlled by people without technical backgrounds who take very conservative and conventional views on nuclear technology.
I worked at GA from 1974 to 2003. Peachbottom was a small hight temperature reactor (HTGR) demo, never intended to be commercially viable. The utility, I think philadelphia electric, was happy with its performance and was one of the utilities that placed orders for twin HTGR 1000Mw plants. Ft. St. Vrain, a 300Mw facility built in Colorado, was unfortunately run by a company with no other nuclear experience. The technical problem was the water driven circulators (the plant used helium for the coolant) had water bearings... whenever the bearings leaked the plant had to be shut down and the coolant dried. The frequent shutdowns seriously hurt the reactor's economics. Later circulators with magnetic bearings were developed but never incorporated.
Around 1974/5 the oil embargo pushed oil prices sky high, the utilities had serious difficulty passing on their high fossil fuel prices to their customers and many were in serious distress. In spite of the fact that nuclear fuel is far cheaper than fossil, most utilities had no choice but to cancel major capital projects. Eight of the full size HTGR plants on order with GA were cancelled, GA subsequently bought its way out of the remaining two because of fears that two plants would not pay for the remaining engineering costs.
three mile island (TMI) brought a full stop to US nuclear reactor building, no matter what type. The country decided that there was no need, our fossil fuels were ample for our needs for a long time... if not forever, long enough that we would have no need for alternates for the foreseeable future. Now that we are in the waning days of fossil fuels and people are once again thinking of alternatives it is a good time to look at all the possibilities. The worst problem for the HTGR is cost... the low power density boosts the reactor size and increases many costs. Maybe it is time for a leap to something new, and the thorium cycle does have many advantages.
A technical aside...
the HTGR's much lower core power density, inert gas coolant, and the very high temperature capacity of the graphite blocks that contained the fuel pellets meant that the reactor was much safer than conventional light water reactors... loss of coolant in light water reactors means that the fuel is exposed, which boosts fuel temperatures high enough to melt the metal fuel rods and the fuel itself... a partial loss of coolant happened at TMI, though there was no significant release of radioactivity beyond the containment building.
Chernobyl was also a graphite moderated reactor, but beyond this the Russian design is intrinsically unsafe. Chernobyl used graphite blocks for most of the moderation with a water coolant. The operators conducted 'experiments' that led to conditions whereby the water was boiled away (loss of coolant or LOCA); reactor power and temperature rose sharply, the operators lost the ability to control the reaction, fuel temperature rose melted the fuel and fuel rods. The problem with water is that it can turn to gas, and in the gas state the coolant properties are far different. Not so serious if you design for a gas in the first place. Molten salt reactors use a molten salt that is not subject to a change of state (not, at least, at relatively high temperatures) for the coolant... some big advantages, but special materials must be selected to avoid corrosion in the salt environment.
The earliest US light water reactors are far safer than Chernobyl because the reactor is encased within a very thick steel shell and the shell is then surrounded by an extremely thick reinforced concrete containment building... and, operator training is far more extensive, operators don't do dangerous experiments here. More recent LWR designs have multiple backup systems to prevent a LOCA.
Thanks for your comments. It is good to hear from someone who has some direct experience with these.
Excellent.
I will read and study your text with great interest.
Airdale
Thank you Gail, for this keypost. As usual, wikipedia has a nice article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
What's needed is a proof-of-concept plant that does
- load following, say 100% - 50% in 2 hours
- desal at less than $1/KL
- electricity at under 10c/kwh
- low water loss
- trouble free operation
- happy neighbours.
First, let's build a simple design that generates electricity, and start deploying those. While that's happening, IF resources are available, THEN start adding in the wish list.
Too many simple engineering projects get into trouble because the customer just can't stop adding stuff to the wish list. KISS.
While I've discovered much of this exciting news about LFTR and Coal Tailings in the last 3 years, I'm obviously very late to the game. What I can't figure out is why our geniuses at DOE have not pushed harder to get this technology deployed?
Is it because of Three Mile Island? Entrenched Power Production interests? Political favors?
In any case I hope an Evidence Based Obama Administration takes a serious honest and open look at LFTR. We need LFTR to provide the generation load balance that wind, solar and other renewables lack.
As I said elsewhere, MSR in general and LFTR in particular are radically different (if not exactly new) technologies, do not use the experience of PWR makers and have no on-going revenue stream from sales of new fuel. Given the high risk of trying to build an MSR industry segment from scratch in an (often hysterically) anti-nuclear political milieu, it's not surprising that nobody bothered.
As reality becomes apparent around the world, both politically and ecologically, we may see this attitude change abruptly.
Engineer-Poet, I agree with you completely. The LFTR is an ideas whose time is almost here. I have told Kirk Sorensen to get ready because his time is coming soon.
Let's talk money...this outfit Thorium Power linked in the article, is it legit?
Last look it was trading for .14 cents a share, down from .37 cents in the last 52 weeks. It trades on the pink sheets Over the counter as a penny stock.
The company claims relationships with Red Star, the Russian nuclear outfit state owned by the Russians and some ongoing linkups with India, so if this technology is as promising as it is claimed, this could be the steal of a lifetime...how about it, What's the read on Thorium Power?
RC
thorium power has a valuation of $41 million.
2008 had a few million in revenue and profit (mainly consulting.)
If they can complete making drop in replacement thorium/uranium fuel rods then they convert their thorium reserves into value by making a significant thorium market.
Thorium Power stock price does not connect to the Liquid Flouride Reactors yet which is still 8-10 years away once someone were to put money into developing them.
Japan has their Fuji Molten Salt design.
The US has a bill which is looking at spending $250 million to start moving Thorium and thorium reactors along. If that bill passed then Thorium power stock might move a bit.
What is wrong with you people? This is like me as an computer system admin banking on Windows 8 to solve all my IT problems. Windows 8 like LFTR is vaporware. There are no operating LFTR reactors of any kind working in the world today yet you are all willing to hitch your wagons a totally unproven solution that could be the Edsel Ford of nuclear reactors.
The solutions are already here and operating.
1. Generate NEGAWATTS. Electricity you don't have to generate is the quickest, cheapest and easiest method of reducing greenhouse emissions. Start a massive campaign of energy conservation and reduction. I realise that this is boring alternative to something as sexy as LFTR however Negawatts will be saving more power sooner than any new technology. You only have to look at the passive solar threads on TOD to see what can be done and what savings can be made.
2. Make the grid smart. Put in new HVDC links with storage. Again distribution links are the hidden boring part of electricity however without them the grid ceases to function. Replace old transformers etc with modern massively more efficient units. Replace dumb loads with smart loads. The storage at the end of HVDC links benefits the current grid as it can greatly reduce the need for spinning reserve which in itself is a massive waste.
3. Put all the renewables into the mix. Join present wind farms (that should be legislated to have storage), with solar thermal, rooftop PV, tidal, wave and geothermal so that the whole is greater that the capacity factor of the parts and then provide 24X7 power.
4. Join in the existing peaking plants to the smart grid with smart controls and add biomass plants that also product biochar to enhance the fertility of the soil.
5. Electrify transport with V2G so it becomes part of the solution.
Look don't get me wrong LFTR might be great and the answer to our problems but lets not put all our eggs on a vaporware technology that may not deliver any of its promises. We need to start now with what we have. Renewables involve some compromises however they can support a technological society that is prepared to meet them halfway.
No one said put all eggs in one basket.
I think the ratio should be 80% on existing technology and 20% on developing new technology or radically improving current tech.
The current democratic bill for $825 stimulus billion has $400 million for high risk/high return energy projects. About $80-100 billion is energy or grid related or efficiency related. So about 0.4% is the ratio that BAU is going for.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/825-billion-proposed-stimulus-bill-400....
* $46.75 billion is to be directly applied to the transportation sector, including on-road, rail, air and maritime segments.
- Of the direct transportation money, $30 billion (64%) is targeted at highway and bridge construction.
* $11.77 billion going to boosting scientific research across many fields.
- $1.9 billion is targeted directly at the US Department of Energy for basic research into the physical sciences including high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and fusion energy sciences and improvements to DOE laboratories and scientific facilities
- $400 million is for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy to support high-risk, high-payoff research into energy sources and energy efficiency.
* $11 billion is to be applied for research and development, pilot projects, and federal matching funds for the Smart Grid Investment Program to modernize the electricity grid.
* Power grid upgrades to support increased use of renewables will get $32 billion.
* $8 billion for loans for renewable energy power generation and transmission projects is to be provided.
* the production tax credit, which was extended for one year last year after much partisan bickering, will receive a $20 billion boost and a multi-year extension for wind, geothermal, hydro, and bioenergy.
* Building retrofits to improve energy efficiency will get $16 billion.
* Carbon capture technologies will get $2.4 billion.
* Weatherizing middle-income homes will get $6 billion.
Venture beat also lists some other items getting funding
* $6.9 billion to help state and local governments become more energy efficient
* $6 billion for broadband and wireless services in under served areas
* $430 million for small business loans
* $650 million to continue a coupon program to convert American televisions from analog to digital transmission
Don't know where the $400 million would go to.
There is a separate proposed $250 million for Thorium R&D.
Neither the $825 billion stimulus bill or the $250 million bill for Thorium has passed.
Ender, it always amuses me when renewables advocates get carried away and imagine that Jevons paradox and the lawa of thermodynamics can be repealed. While I favor energy efficiency I am not under any illusion that it can lead to a greatly diminished energy demand. Energy efficient makes energy cheaper, and the history of modern civilization tells us that cheap energy will always find its uses. Negawatts is a bemper sticker slogan, not a solution to our energy issues. The words "smart grid" are held to have magic powers when spooken or written by renewables advocates, who seldome tell us what a smart grid will and will dont do, and even less frequently tell us what a smart grid will cost. HVDC lines are expensive as is energy storage. Both are nice, but the expense will be a serious impetiment to fighting global warming. Mixing renewables means replicating generating capackty. replicating enrgy capacity is also very expensive. Building LFTRs would be far cheaper that as mixed systyen of renewables. Using existing peaking plants means producing CO2, so it is not a post carbon solution. Electrifided transportation will not work well with negawatts. You need more rather than less electricity to make an electrified transportation system work.
My complaint about renewables advocates is that they tend to not llok carefully at their ideas before they turn them into slogans. You use the turm vaporware to describe the LFTR, but renewable carbon replacement systems are if anything more vaporous.
Negawatts are great for Electric Transportation. They make room on an overloaded grid and overall supply pallette for plugging in the EV's, once the redundant A/C's and TV's have been unplugged.
I do support further research for Thorium, and you make a good case for it. Thanks for the article.
Ender ,
Nobody is hitching any wagons up.We are just talking,if its ok with you.
And Vista IS vaporware. Its donkey-kong code.
Airdale
Ender, that is exactly what California did in the 1980s and 1990s. Extremely good efficiency with an almost zero percapita energy increase for 15 years. Almost "negawatts". But it fails...always, because "negawatts' cannot account for growth, at all. We ended up relying on such a concept and got our asses kicked in 2000 because population grew 30% and generatoin grew only about 7%.
The LFTR (and other nuclear energy solutions) can provide the energy we need for anything we need.
I would disagree with Charles about waste LFTR heat. Why is it inefficient. Kirk Sorensen showed the figures on how to put high temp waste heat to use. It's 'free', so why not use it?
David
Wern't renewables "Vapourware" 10 years ago?
Twenty years from now, I wonder how renewables will be viewed. Check out the biofuels thread.
That's worth wondering, while we've been using wind, hydro and solar in numerous forms, for heating lighting and transportation for thousands of years. These are the perennials that have simply been upstaged and underappreciated by some snazzy hotshots in the last few decades.
We're trying like hell to keep the Oil Lifestyle going, making sources that mimic our big fling with Va-voom!.. but the old standards will be showing their strength more clearly when more and more of the ICE's sputter and die..
Thorium? Maybe. We'll see.
We have to think a bit farther ahead than your average IT manager.
I really think the LFTR is the best bet for gen4. A crash program would only cost a few billion at most, and is potentially very rewarding. We need more of these crash programs (high altitude wind, advanced geothermal, advanced storage and grid techs etc) to develop these high risk but promising technologies that private money obviously won't fund, as an extra wildcard in our energy policy. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Me too!
"The use of thorium as a nuclear fuel was extensively studied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1950 and 1976, but was dropped, because unlike uranium-fueled Light Water Reactors (LWRs), it could not generate weapons' grade plutonium"
Ah...the irony ... it burns...
Speek has the answer for all those who ask, "If this technology is so good, why isn't in use all over the world?" Most countries, the US, China, India, perhaps Iran don't want to admit this but the reason for MASSIVE government support for the existing nuclear technology is due to the by-product of weapons grade nuclear materials for these countries defense / millitary institutions. So, that's fine... THOSE days are somewhat past... Let's move on.
Current nuclear industry suppliers make billions of profits by supplying expensive and sophisticated prepared fuel rods for nuclear power plants. This LFTR technology does NOT need that and thus is a huge threat to the existing nuclear power industry.
If we listen to people like Ender, we would have discouraged Helwitt & Packard, the many people who created automobiles (why try to create something NEW when we have HORSES???) and many other different and more efficient technologies.... INTERNET anyone? It was NOT tried and tested. Dont you all remember? We HAD the US POSTAL system? Why the heck did we need this darn internet... Thanks for your supporting comments Ms. Ender.
IMHO, Cyril R. has it right: This looks very interesting and promising. Let's check it out ASAP, see if we can make it work as Mr. Charles Barton suggests and see what we get. No, don't put all our eggs in this basket because we all know it's not the whole chicken... Let's put a modest amount of money behind a Manhattan Project type effort and shoot for the moon.
Good on you Mr. Charles Barton and your colleagues and Mr/Ms dwalters for your support. This is a good thing for the world and a GREAT thing for the USofA (the country I love to love)
Ciao, TF
I was born in the past and lived in the past but then moved into the future and worked there(development/research/etc). Now I am living back in the past but I would prefer the future.
However on this land where I am is where I will die before too awful long but I always had hopes for the future of mankind. I worked on rocket guidance technology as well and I always knew we were headed out to the stars and beyond. It was my dreamstuff for sooo long.
Now I live the past once more and its ok..but its not like our parents and grandparents wished for. I hate to see us die off like vermin in a trap. We should be better than that.
Airdale
airdale - "We should be better than that" - Indeed!
Best wishes - Thirra
Airdale - I hate to see us die off like vermin in a trap.
We made ourselves vermin and we made the trap.
Indeed we should be better than that. Especially before we obtain the means to make the trap even bigger and comprehensive before it goes off.
"Vermin" - one of those words that make me retch. It exposes the blatant stupidity and rampant arrogance of man, the sole species that I would tend to call vermin, for being the only one that is utterly destructive to the whole.
Should we? Why? What is it that makes people think that man should be, or is any better? Is it all the shiny crap we make to delude ourselves? Or our supposed wisdom that is nowhere to be seen? Is it our horribly bloated ego? Our creativity in coming up with ever new atrocities? Or is it, because we are able to drown our own irrelevance in noise and flickering lights, calling this all a great achievement?
I tell you, homo sapiens is collectively insane. Sacrificing billions of lives for what is called "culture" and "art" and an easy and cheap life for a chosen few is, in my eyes, total madness and an unbearable cruelty. That we should have to pay dearly for this homicidal adventure termed "civilisation" would only be overdue justice. Findng a way to continue this silly game for much longer and thus prolonging the suffering, well, I hope it will not happen.
That said, end of rant.
Best hopes for temperance and modesty.
Yes it is a rant. It is basically worthless and not a very good one at that.
We evolved because...........Wait....why am I wasting my time on someone called 'Fallout Monkey' and when he is just ranting?
A waste of time and bytes.
Onto my todban list it goes.
Airdale
I agree that weapons production is likely a strong reason governments fund conventional nuclear. Wonder how the same govts will look upon a proposal to switch to LFTR, given what Charles Barton said above:
It would be a wonderful case of swords to plowshares if this was to happen... but how realistic is it?
Those days never were. Commercial nuclear power production has never been massively government-supported and has never produced weapon-grade nuclear materials. Oil- and gas-taxing governments would no doubt be happy to utter the lies you say they don't want to, but have too much dignity.
Deception by insinuation, by framing, are of course very rewarding for such governments -- supporting an industry of experts to discuss the nuclear power/nuclear weapons link, for instance, with great solemnity. Wholly meretricious; they are no more linked than cars and guns.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
a car isn't "more efficient" than a horse. a car is more time-efficient - it reaches a destination faster than a horse. but a car is less energy-efficient - it burns more calories per mile than a horse. a car is also enormously less CO2-efficient than a horse, which is of course carbon-neutral. the construction of a new car is dependent on mining of metals, some quite exotic. the construction of a new horse requires only grass. etc.
when soon all the fossil fuels are gone, and most of our 700 million cars are out of gas forever, and most of our roads fall into permanent disrepair - can we say that we're better off than if we'd stuck with horses all along?
Bicycles are better than both horses and cars. Can you imagine a horse-based China?
Barton has acknowledged elsewhere that light water reactors (LWRs) are not well-suited to generating weapon-grade plutonium, and he meant to write LMFBR, liquid metal fast breeder reactor --
Me:
(The table in question showed a 96-percent 239-Pu mole fraction in fast-spectrum power reactor plutonium, versus 60 percent for the same from water-cooled power reactors.)
Barton:
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
I have some technical questions.
Moderator: why not D2O (heavy water) in CANDU style as mentioned on the thorium forums? Seems to have a number of advantages in a thermal reactor. Is graphite now the definitive choice?
Power generator: consider ultra supercritical Rankine? These get higher efficiency at lower temperature than the Brayton cycles and appear a bit cheaper too. This will allow lowering the reactor operating temperature without losing kWhs generated - lower temperature will be cheaper overall and with less material durability issues (eg graphite moderator life). The benefit of the Brayton would be power density but that's not the most important for a stationary reactor. The Brayton diverts a lot of it's mechanical power to run the compressor, right?
These questions are nearly stylistic and cant be given a good answer really without actually building a couple of competing reactors and comparing them against each other. D2O has the problem of added plumbing cost and a slightly nastier failure situation is something I could imagine, along with dumping a (rather small) amount of efficiency from the waste heat in the moderator. Its also unclear that a larger supercritical rankine power conversion cycle at a lower temperature (and thus efficiency) offers a necissarily lower cost total cost of plant than Brayton. I'm really unsure that either of these possible engineering decisions have a right answer we can find without actually trying them out.
Stylistically I favor no moderator at all to keep things simpler and I believe cheaper.
That would have to be weighed against the fact that fast reactors are more difficult in operation and control. Or is this much easier with an LFTR?
At least with molten salts, you don't have to depend on doppler broadening to get a strong negative temperature coefficient; good old fluid expansion takes care of that.
I understand that fast-neutron MSRs would probably use chloride salts rather than fluorides; the heavier chlorine atoms would slow neutrons a lot less.
As I understand it, the fluid expansion works with thermal and epithermal neutron reactors well enough, but you have to rely on doppler broadening in fast reactors because they can propogate faster than the speed of sound of the salt. Or something like that; I'm not a nuclear engineer.
If you use liquid fluoride salts, they're allready moderating to the thermal or epithermal spectrum. Without any moderator at all in a LFTR its still not a fast reactor. For a molten salt reactor to be hard spectrum you need chloride salts. Adding graphite or D20 simply increases the moderation level and reduces the core size. This is an operational and design advantage, which is why many like additional moderators, but they aren't necissary.
I've also been thinking about using some form of synthetic diamond or diamond like carbon as the moderator, with it's superb thermal conductivity and denser packed carbon (more moderation per volume). Some of the synthetic diamond and diamond like carbons are really durable mechanically, and maybe they swell less in a high neutron flux environment as well (not sure about that last one).
It's kind of a crazy idea though.
Diamond wouldn't stay diamond very long under a strong neutron flux; the displacement of atoms within the matrix (which creates the Wigner energy at sub-annealing temperatures) would convert it to graphite.
I've seen a claim that even pyrolytic graphite moderator elements would require regular replacement due to swelling from neutron damage, but I can't say I know anything else about it.
This is one of the reasons why French researchers consider a no graphite core. However if we wish to build a large number of reactors in a shore periuod of time, we would have to go with graphite cores. Load following, and serving as peak generators increases graphite core life. Graphite is not expensive, but it will come out of the LFTR core very radioactive.
What's the source of radioisotopes in the core elements? Activation to C-14, absorption of U-232 and fission products, or something else?
I am no expert but I suppose fission products and Tritium.
There is some discussion on energyfromthorium.com/forum about being able to chemically remove tritium. Tritium is especially sneaky stuff (that is the technical term, BTW) because it's essentially about as dense as He or H and is hard to 'trap'.
David
The question is whether it will prove a more difficult issue to deal with than activated carbon. The British are having a hard time with decommissioning the graphite cores.
Since you have experts on tap, I suggest this to you as a worthwhile question for them.
Actually I seem to recall reading something about the graphite in the US bomb production reactors -- which were, of course, almost entirely distinct from its power reactors -- shrinking. This makes me thing prolonged irradiation of graphite will make it diamondlike, significantly denser, and prolonged irradiation of diamond would make it swell through partial graphitization, and they would meet in the middle.
Sintered diamond particles from a process like this --
might be a good shortcut to that medium-density state, so that subsequent irradiation wouldn't change it much.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
Wasn't there something about creating better moderation (by denser arrangement of carbon atoms in diamond compared to graphite) to achieve criticality in a weapon, where a conventional explosive was used to compress the graphite into diamond?
Note the pressure for that observation: 800 atm. Unless I am very mistaken, graphite is the lowest-energy form of pure carbon at atmospheric pressure.
It is, but the difference is tiny.
IIRC graphite is still stablest at 800 bar, and 11 kbar is where diamond stability begins. Kinetics rule.
Interestingly, with boron nitride, it's the other way around: borazon is the ground state. Still, the soft form is easier to get.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
Ugh. The hateful "thing" for "think" error. I tried to edit that, and it let me get started, but when I had it ready and hit "Save", it said I had no access.
A long time ago I read something about amorphous diamond with some kind of treatment having a much lower swell rate in a high neutron flux environment, than graphite, with the suggestion that swell rate can be tailored even more with various treatments, but can't find the reference anymore.
Anyway, under lower reactor operating temperatures, the moderator life is greatly extended.
So, I'd like to take a tally of the potential problems cited thus far. For the sake of this debate, please add to them:
1) It would be wrong to deploy a new, cheap energy source because society has shown it can abuse abundant energy.
2) Renewable sources are superior, quickly deployable, and exist in great enough quantity to provide for our needs.
Chemist "yes" in the sense that Ender basically *thinks* this is a problem. Most us are fine with vast quantities of high quality energy. Also, the theme of the post is that renewables are not superior and can't handle base load, so their deployability is irrelevant.
David
I would say that theme is itself irrelevant if not fallacious (base load intermittency bla bla bla unquantified rhetoric so tiresome).
But that's just me. Please keep bashing renewables if that makes you feel better. Know that it won't help bringing the discussion to a close, quite the reverse.
If you want to advance nuclear power, start with stopping to pit it against other low carbon sources. Pick on conventional coal or something.
I reviewed the web based position statements of the US Senate Energy Committee. I was surprised to find a lot of support for coal (coal with co2 capture). I expect much will be spent on coal/co2/capture R&D before coal gives up significant market share.
I'm afraid you're right about that. A political loss most likely.
Nuclear "against" renewables debate must continue to be addressed as long as (a few mistaken) renewables proponents continue to block nuclear development and deployment with arguments such as "renewables can provide baseload grid power faster and cheaper than nuclear". Especially regarding wind generation, they are definitely wrong, but they continue the struggle with and incredible capacity to ignore reality.
Now, if you want to talk solar thermal with storage to replace all peaking generation, I'm supportive. Still leaves a requirement for huge baseload resources, though, and with the way the debate is NOW framed, that will wind up being all coal as soon as the Natural Gas is gone (soon!).
The same could be said about you. Like I said, the pot calls the kettle black. Wind is a serious contender, that train has passed scientifically. However, some people prefer rhetoric and ideology over science and facts. This is a very sad thing.
Please provide some reliable non-wind-industry (and non-competing-industry if you prefer) documentation for backup to your claim. Perhaps you might also try a comparison of Denmark's generation mix and CO2 emissions per unit energy to those of France? Denmark's CO2 emissions trends since initiating the big wind generation build?
See, for example, Decarolis and Keith, "the economics of large scale wind in a carbon constrained world" and related works regarding this topic, for a methodology that does take into account all factors that are relevant (such as geographic wind resource and learning curves, but assumes no good carbon free storage system). If you do the exact same exercise for nuclear LWR in the US things are not looking good - except for extremely high penetrations since the cost of wind goes up much faster after that. So not very surprisingly it looks like we can't do 100% wind without cheap efficient scalable non-CO2 storage. But with lots of wind, lots of nuclear and biogas, we should make do just fine even with no very large scale storage. Economics will be very important regarding how much of every tech we'll be having. And then there's the likely development of solar, tidal, geothermal, waves and what not complicating things further...
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/53.DeCarolis.2002.IsTheAnswerBlowin...
I agree that both of these points are minor, but we need everyone to do their best to tear apart this technology: this could be that important. I would say, from points 1) and 2), that if that's the best that opponents can come up with, things are looking very good for LTFR.
Agreed. I should also point out that it was proponents of "renewables" that based the LFTR and nuclear in general. This IS why this debate is so important.
There is panic, and I've had people among some nuclear groups tell me off list that they are highly pissed about Dr. Jim Hansen and Dr. Steve Chu's advocacy of nuclear energy as a "non-carbon" source of generation. So the anti-nuke crowd, many of them, really don't want to see any funds pointing toward the LFTR because the understand the 'threat'.
In reality, there is no 'threat'. the issue is getting rid of coal, first, and fossil in general, secondly. No *serious* 'renewable outside CSP has ever been able to propose this, and even with CSP, there is this little issue of storage.
So our "side" generally doesn't raise the 'bashing renewables' as much as we are reactive to the attacks on nuclear by *counterpoising* renewables to nuclear.
This technology that Charles so eloquently proposed is something we want to see *started*. That is what Charles, I think, is advocating. Lets start funding deployment of the LFTR and see what we learn as we develop it. This doesn't do a think 'against low-carbon wind or solar', but gives society an "alternative" to them.
David
Ironically, molten salt storage is remarkably similar to LFTR molten salt operation. Only much simpler. Same for hot water based storage. Nuclear steam drum. Personally I'm tired of people who think we can't build thermal storage but we can built extremely advanced LFTRs.
More unquantified arguments, just what we don't need. I didn't expect you to get my point, since few nuclear advocates do, but I've been (apparently unsuccesfully) trying to make the nuclear advocates to understand some pitfalls.
I'm not one of them. I merely point out that the LFTR is proven, industrial level Molten Salt Storage is not, yet. I'm hopeful, actually Cyril. Even though it will cost more to deploy such devices, it has more use than you might be expecting.
The LFTR's heat exchanger, the key 'energy transfer device', can be very easily configured to bleed off some of this energy to the *same* kind of device to allow for excess generation during peak periods. As Charles was implying, many technologies that renewable energy activists hold dear are as applicable to the LFTR (and nuclear in general) as they are to CSP or other renewables. [salt heat storage, pump-storage, HVDC, etc etc]
David
I've been running some numbers on using thermal storage for a baseload high temperature reactor (like LFTR) where the heat store is used to run an additional power cycle as peaker. The extra costs should be low even if I use twice the industry estimate for molten salt storage systems, and valuable peak power is generated, while maintaining constant operation of the nuclear island for maximum economy and no issues with startup/powerdowns. Everything interacting with the nuclear island remains near atmospheric pressure so safety should be maintained as well.
I also think that there is large potential for using the heat rejection of high temperature reactors in a CAES storage system (replacing expensive natural gas should be an easy business case), as is also mentioned by the Engineer-Poet.
I have no doubt about Molten Salt Energy storage, my question rather has to dio with the cost of doubling or trippling the solar array and building in an energy storage system. If the cost of simi peak-ST is already close to the cost of conventional nuclear what would the cost base ST look with molten salt storage like?
Since the topic has come up, what is the piping the molten salts are flowing through made out of? You need something that won't absorb neutrons in addition to not corrode from the 1600F flourides.
ORNL developed a Nickel Alloy that could handle intense radiation, hot salts and fission products. That begins to have problems somewhere around 700 C. Other more exotic materials including carbon-carbon composites might be considered for even higher tempreturels, for example if industrial process heat is needed.
It may be much easier to run the reactor under lower temperatures and use the electricity to get the required high temperature heat (resistance heating). And then use the heat rejection for lower temperature process heat and other CHP such as MED desal. Moderator life is much reduced at higher temperatures.
If the moderator is key to keeping the reactor components small enough to transport by truck (allowing them to be built and thoroughly quality-checked in a factory), adding storage canisters for a dozen moderator replacements over the lifetime of the plant may be a small relative cost.
If the radioactivity is not from 14C, another possibility is to have one refractory vessel and just heat the spent moderator elements in an oxygen atmosphere. The graphite burns off, leaving 3H2O and CO2 as gases and salts as a residue. Recycle the salts to the reactor, store the 3H2O as concrete or something, dump the CO2.
700C is 1300F. That's hot enough for me. All I want is electricity. Why do why have to try to forge steel with a LFTR? The graphite moderator has a life of four years and is messy to deal with.
We'd have to scrub the CO2 to make sure radioactive gases don't escape.
That's why I said using the electricity to produce the high temp heat (arc furnace?) would be more realistic.
Really? You don't want plastics, or ammonia for fertilizer, or anything like that? If we're going to make those from atmospheric carbon (which we need in order to be renewable), we need to make hydrogen for all of these. Electrolytic hydrogen is horribly expensive and inefficient; thermochemical hydrogen will require temperatures on the order of 830°C.
GE's F-series gas turbines have turbine inlet temps on the order of 1300°C, so we can use higher temperatures if we can get them.
We wouldn't have to scrub anything, just put the end-use on the other side of a heat exchanger or two.
You don't want plastics, or ammonia for fertilizer, or anything like that?
No.
This is a fundamental with you Three Thorinos: there is no thought given to limits to growth, no thought given to a different, non-growth paradigm, no thoughtgiven to history. The fact humankind has used each new energy source to push as fast and as hard as we could for more, more, more means nothing to you. All you want is BAU, greenwashed.
There is a reason this entire thread is circle after circle. You will not deal with time as THE limiting factor. You will not deal with other Liebig-type limits. You will not deal with creating a new paradigm. You wil not deal with egalitarian models of existence.
All BAU, all the time.
Cheers
PS. I actually had a nice post done up and had my connection die without saving it first. Been without a connection most of the day. And, just before posting that post and losing my connection got an e-mail that a sibling passed @ 2PM on Inauguration day.
This poorly done little rant will have to suffice for the moment.
Yes, there is. Because the doomers insist on repeating ad. nauseum pointless positions which have zero political reality. Show me even 25% of voters onside, then I'll read another of your posts.
lengould: Yes, there is. Because the doomers insist on repeating ad. nauseum pointless positions which have zero political reality. Show me even 25% of voters onside, then I'll read another of your posts.
How does the steadfast denial of real factors on this thread help to increase that percentage?
Are you interested in discussing a genuine solution to the full breadth of the 'energy problem', or just a narrow subsection of the full context?
Maybe when the posting postulates a 'silver bullet', its target inevitably becomes as much a part of the discussion as the contraption.
I think the philosophical issues from this thread could make many Campfire articles to come. Does anyone have any plans to write an article?
ccpo, very sorry to here about your loss, and on such a joyous day, otherwise. Must have been an emotionally tumultuous day. Hang in there.
Once your better, would you want to take up the challenge and script a campfire posting on the philosophical (if you want to call them that) problems with supplying humans with endless (or even hugely abundant) energy?
I might work something up, but I'm really busy this week, and many of you seem much more eloquent than I am.
Materials for the primary loop of a nuclear reactor is more severely constrained than a gas turbine. In particular, not even a trace of cobalt is allowed. We also need something that won't react with fluorine or hydrofluoric acid. ORNL didn't find anything better than 700C.
Plastics from ethane which is from dehydrating ethanol. Ammonia more or less from the same source. We can burn ethanol in a oxygen poor environment to produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
Prolonging core life is something to be researched. Load following and serving as peak rather than base generation capacity prolongs graphite core life. Cores probably can be reused after being subjected to a 2000 C annealing process. A low cost core disposal system should be in place with the first production LFTR, since the decommissioning process should be built into reactor design.
700degC is not enough. ThF4 freezes at 1110 C, we need something that can reliably stand an extra 400degC.
What happens when you want to stop and cool the reactor?
I am afraid that the first pipe segment that cools below 1110 C will stop the flow and the reactor will overheat because it cannot the flow has stopped so the cooling has stopped.
How is this solved in the current designs?
The problem was solved way back in the 1950's by dissolving the thorium in a mixture of zirconium fluoride, beryllium fluoride, and 7LiF. The melting point of this mixture is much lower.
The hope is that the collector system cost can be reduced so much that it will be economical. Learning curves suggest this is likely, but of course not certain, and achieving the rate of deployment (to get the required learning-by-doing) does require subsidies. IMHO these are strategic subsidies so I for one am fine with that, just like LFTR and other gen4 subsidy programs.
The most optimistic study I've seen claims 300/kWe collector cost. So under a dollar per Watt (3x0.3) for an intermediate load plant with good load following characterstics. Right now, however, the cost would be more in line with recent all-in reactor costings (in constant dollars), perhaps even bigger. Load following is valuable though. Good average pool selling price per MWhe.
dwalters, Ender is considering data and perception that you apparently know little and care even less about. Because you do not value his inputs means neither that they are valueless or that the consideration of them is not valid and pertinent thought.
Your demeaning dismissal, and the commonality of such attitude, is tangible evidence toward his position. As is your unabashed desire for vast quantities of energy. Where and how does this tiny planet absorb all of that rampant human activity?
Every empire in history has no doubt had a hapless minority who have had to endure watching as the majority flung the whole thing against a wall of it own making. There is a way down from the precarious status quo, but too many people wish to climb even higher and continue with the concentration of profrit and control. If only it were just a bad movie.
I believe that the question of how to increase energy availability sustainably is complex, and the ultimate answers (assuming we don't kill ourselves off, the nihilistic answer) may be surprising.
Do poor people employing desperate measures cause environmental degradation? Yes.
Do wealthy people hoard and consume well beyond their basic needs, causing environmental degradation? Again, yes.
Which is better from the standpoint of a sustainable earth: to secure energy for the desperately poor, or to reduce the hoarding/overshoot of the relatively wealthy? Much of the disagreement in this thread seems to break along the lines of the contributor's answer to this question. For my part, I would say the answer to the question is (drum roll....):
Yes; we need to pay attention to both effects, because I doubt that a long-term solution can favor one side at the expense of the other.
Great stuff, Charles. I've long been a fan of yours.
TOD should give you a weekly slot here.
I favor the cleanest lowest cost energy to help raise the world's poor out of poverty.
At the present time, I think LFTR has the best chance of realizing this objective.
That does not mean I am against wind/solar. I plan to implement PV solar just as soon as it makes financial sense in my location.
For the next 20yrs I would support aggressive research and development on both LFTR and wind/solar. Let's build a LFTR plant and a 24/7 wind/solar/storage plant. As we learn more we can shift deployment in favor of the cost/benefit leader.
If your position is "I want high cost energy to discourage demand of energy and associated resources" then we will just have to acknowledge that we have different objectives and agree to disagree on energy policy.
Well it would help a lot to have conventional energy sources much more expensive. This can be helped along by implementing a carbon tax with revenue recycling for optimal efficiency and equity. Even better would be to also have taxes on other pollutants like mercury, sox, nox, particulate etc all based on marginal social cost (scientific work varies but we can start with the more conservative estimates to please the sceptics).
I'm in favor of taxing things we don't want like pollution. But it has to be based on cost benefit. No, a life is not worth an infinite amount of money. If it were we would outlaw driving or set speed limits at 20mph.
I would support a gradually rising carbon tax, mostly as a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But it will not pass in this economy. What is doable is funding for R&D for alternative low carbon energy.
The intrinsic value of life is a controversial topic, but for to get started with taxing pollution we don't have to deal too much with that: we can start with a more conservative, economically quantified analysis (like CBA) that uses only explicit economic values, and take a lower value from the scientific work done. That way most will agree and we can get used to having such taxes on negative externalities.
I'd reckon a carbon tax will have much greater effect on coal initially than oil because the former is more carbon intensive and alternatives are more readily available.
Funding for RD&D isn't mutually exclusive with a carbon tax, since the tax only marketizes, whereas private sector RD&D will always be suboptimal even with a carbon tax since property rights aren't clearly defined (private benefits of innovation will always be smaller than social benefits since it's impossible for private investors to take all the benefits of the innovation). Often a new tech is judged too risky and will not be developed with private money, while it may be a lottery winner for society. Private companies also have limited scope for RD&D - they focus on a small selection since there's so much promising stuff that can be researched but only limited company strategy.
The production tax credits appear to work very well like most production based subsidies, although they can get expensive when more energy gets generated by the sources receiving the credits (but at that time, they should have matured so a phase out is possible, shaking out the less competitive sources).
I have always dismissed this technology, but after the article, my opinion has changed. We have been hearing about breeder reactors being "just around the corner" from the 1950's on.
Does anyone have a realistic time frame on this technology, and it's scalability?
I think that is one of the issues we would like to see addressed when we have future articles on this topic.
Considering what the Manhatten project acomplished iin a little over 3 years, an 8 year time frame would take be seem reasonable. Much of the nasdic research was finished by ORNL by the mid 1970's. Ralph Moir lists the following research tasks:
Safeguard and non proliferation analyses in use of Th-U-233 cycle. The point of this topic is to understand proliferation issues.
make most or all of fuel once started up (CR~1)
maybe start up on reactor minor actinides (Pu and higher); get credit for taking on this material rather than paying for enriched U
enhance U-232 production to promote non-proliferation by making diversion of U-233 harder, less desirable and easier to detect.
Centrifuge for noble and semi-noble metal separations. The point of this work is to improve the outlook for extraction and handling of the precipitating fission products to enhance waste management strategies.
base on continuous flow contactor incorporate into pump
Waste form and assay study. This topic emphasizes waste management, a vital aspect of nuclear energy.
estimate assay (carry over of actinides) with each class of waste, e.g., gaseous, noble and semi-noble metals and valence two and three products with reductive extraction. Consider Bi carry over and resulting Po-210.
waste form: fluoride for interim and substitute fluorapatite for permanent storage
Plant description, size, undergrounding, cost, systems. Economic considerations are important motivators to develop this new nuclear power system.
change out time for graphite vs. core size
salt formulation
underground design considerations
cost analysis preliminaries
power conversion cycle
System assessment along lines of NERI-2002 proposal. What is known about the molten salt reactor is decades old. Bringing up to date the database is vital to resurrecting the molten salt reactor development.
Other Suggested Research Topics could be deferred.
All Basic research building LFTR prototype 1 and building of developmental prototype and product design and design and construction of production facility could be acomplished within an 8 yeartime frame.
Rather than attempting to upscaled the model the approach would be to build many small modular units, that could be manufactured and set up rspidly. Cost savings would be accomplished by lowering labor input per watt generated, savings on interest charges by shorting the time between the reactor was ordered and the turbine began turning to generate electricity from 10 years to something like 3 months. Other cost lowering measures such as reusing old generating plant sites, and underground placement of reactors could also lower cost.
Forgive me, but a 235 bomb is not that hard, especially using the rifle method and a large quantity of 235. I bet collective we could do it on this board.
This looks more difficult than presented, as the basic knowledge has been around for quite a while, and we still have not had significant results.
The bomb was the easy part. They had to fill out the government mandated paperwork as well.
We've also known how to build LWR's and PHWR's for "quite a while" but none are being built, even though the need is obvious. Technical problems are not the holdback.
Some Thorium-232 converts U-232 rather than U-233. The presence of U-232 along with U-233 creates serious difficulties fot a would weapoms builder. U-232 is emitts a very hard Gamma ray, and is very radioactive, and it has a very radioactive daughter product. U-232 thus makes the weaponization of U-233 very difficult.
http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/9_1kang.pdf
Thus would be proliferators would almost certainly choose PU-239 rather than u-233. North Korea was able to construct a Pu[239 production reactor, despite having a limited industrial base, and serious financial constraints. It is difficult to see why and rogue state wishing to acquire nuclear weapons would prefer U-233 to pu-239.
"Considering what the Manhatten project acomplished iin a little over 3 years"
Great. Maybe instead of blowing up one city with a few tens of thousands of people in it, we can finish off our project of blowing up the whole living earth.
Sorry, but holding up a project whose purpose was to vaporize large masses of non-combatants as something to emulate always bugs me for some reason.
But if we're going to go there---
The US went from having a small, second class air-force and navy before WWII to having enough planes, ships and guns to win a world war on two fronts in a very short time. If we could do that, we could also make the country massively more efficient, reduce energy usage in all sorts of ways, decommission all coal and nuke plants, and make up the difference with some renewables at a rate much faster than previous energy transitions have followed.
But the biggest thing we have to shift is our idea that the goal is to continually expand human power. Our goal must now turn to the difficult problem of learning to limit ourselves, and especially limiting the most powerful among us, so that we are far below the level of power at which we can continue to threaten the rest of complex life and the systems that support it. If we don't do this, the consequences of our overreaching will eventually reduce us, perhaps in the near future. But we will also take down much of the living world with us.
Unfortunately, based on the latest out of research in the Arctic, we seem to already have passed a point of no return. Methane is now bubbling up from the floor across much of the continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean, and this almost certainly marks the beginning of a colossal feedback loop that will send us quickly into global temperature ranges not seen for many tens of millions of years, and perhaps beyond. This is coming on top of the mass extinction event that industrial human society had already triggered. Some here seem to be unaware of these things, or to think that they are of little consequence. I cannot share this position.
Best wishes to all.
Dohboi
You'll forgive me, there is a couple of facts I don't understand about molten salts reactors :
1) in case of liquid leaks, I guess the fuel being at one atm pressure and at high temperatures solidifies quickly and has to be collected somewhere, how can you assure that the fission products don't produce radioactive pollution, for example by high energy gammas?
2) which is the fissile start up inventory for GW installed of enriched uranium/U-233 (the latter not available in nature) or plutonium and transuranics still in waste storages; in both case, which will be the actinides production for example for GWyear of electricity production?
I think this a non negligible problem, because many countries (besides France, Usa or Japan) maybe don't have still the begining fissile inventory to feed the first GWs reactors; in this case, can you use ordinary low enriched uranium ?
1) The soon to be solid salt is inside a containment vessel.
2) You can start with U235 as the initial fissile material to get the process going. Pure U235 is nuclear grade material and mixed in U238 will turn into transuranics which are messy. I'm not sure how they intend to do startup if disbanding our nuclear bomb inventory is not available.
The initial start ups will be with plutonium from "spent reactor Fuel". There will be a considerable amount of it. A second source would be stockpiled weapons grade plutonium. Then Stockpiled U-235. By this time a considerable quanity of Np-237 would accumulat from LFTR operations. It would probably be possible to swap out Np-237 for U-235 in the weapons inventory.
To G.R.L. Cowan: In two countries I do know about, India & China, the nuclear power industry is financed, managed and governed - in all ways - by the government. Just two days ago, an Indian official announced that "there is no room for the private sector in civilian nuclear power" (don't have the reference immediately at hand - please google it, it's easily found). I don't know about Iran, but I can reasonably assume that government has a pretty tight hand on the nuclear controls panel. With the regard to the USofA, are you suggesting that Mr. Westinghouse, of his own insight and totally using his own money in the 1940's, opened the window to a bright sunny morning one day and said, "...Gee, I think I'll go out and spend a couple of billion dollars to develop nuclear energy... AND I'll develop it using a totally NEW technology that can ALSO produce weapons grade nuclear materials... BUT I WON'T take nor will I need any kind of support from the government..." And then, do you think he discovered LFTRs and said, "...Gee, that's a wonderful technology... It's less expensive, doesn't create hazzardous wastes, is low pressure, doesn't create any proliferation issues... BUT, no, no, no... I'll use this ultra expensive, dirty, hazzardous technology because I think it's so cool... I am going to put LFTR on the shelf..." Do you expect anyone to believe that?
To bmcnett: How many horses do you own?
TF
Not to go too deep into it, but if I were to guess, production of nuclear weapons materials in the 40's would probably be seen as a pretty patriotic thing to do.
Alex P you raise two seperate issues. There are several solutions to the liquid leak question. First folitale fission products including radioactive gasses, should be extracted from core salts on an ongoing basis. This would mean fewer radiation problems with a leak. Seconcly small leaks would probably be quickly stopped by salt freezing as it leaves the hot reactor core environment. Thirdly in the event of a massive leak, a core catcher would recapture the escaped fluid salts. Finally a system of barriers can be constructed to control the consequences of any leak.
Secondly, A properly designed and managed LFTR would be an actinides deatroyer which is wht NSRs have been proposed as solutions to the problem of nuclear waste, and nuclear disarmament tools.
Charles H - "For the next 20yrs I would support aggressive research and development on both LFTR and wind/solar. Let's build a LFTR plant and a 24/7 wind/solar/storage plant. As we learn more we can shift deployment in favor of the cost/benefit leader."
No I am not against technology or anything like it. I also realise that large scale renewable is as much vaporware as LFTR however given the fact that there are no LFTR reactors operating a more sensible approach to go with what we have now rather than wait for a shiny new toy.
First of all there is no evidence that energy efficiency always gets eaten up by growth. Numerous studies like:
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid113.php
"Efficient use of energy is in all countries the most important, economical, prompt, underused, overlooked, and misunderstood way to provide future energy services. It is rapidly becoming even larger, faster, and cheaper as technologies, delivery methods, and integrative design improve. Whole-system design can indeed make very large energy savings cost less than small ones. But capturing energy efficiency's remarkable potential requires careful terminology, prioritization, attention to engineering details and to market failures, and willingness to accept measured physical realities even if they conflict with economic theories. If well done, such energy efficiency can displace costly and disagreeable energy supplies, enhance security and prosperity, speed global development, and protect Earth's climate — not at cost but at a profit. This article appeared in the Encyclopedia of Energy, Volume 2. pages 383–401 (23 July 2004). "
Show that energy efficiency should be the first goal of any campaign to reduce CO2 emissions and secure a long term future for our civilisation. Cutting back on our waste first will give a much lower bar to raise that we can raise more slowly by getting pride out of doing more with less as once upon a time in a country far far away we used to do before conspicious consumption became the norm.
Second it seems an undercurrent of nuclear for the rich and renewables for the poor. This is expensive technology and is not suited to all. Renewables are just as suited to an African village where they are already transforming lives. People can study after dark simply because they have a solar light. To us people used to turning on the 50inch plasma and getting annoyed if it does not come up is an inconvenience. In poorer countries burning lamps after dark is simply not affordable unless perhaps they do not eat the next day. A solar lamp can transform their lives. So before we whinge about renewables capacity factor perhaps we can spare a thought for poorer people. If we can find ways to work smarter around renewables perhaps there will be more available for poorer countries.
To see what is being done perhaps you should look at these links.
http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/Futures/LF-Photovoltaic/index.asp
"More than two billion people worldwide, including pockets of underdeveloped or remote areas in the United States, have no electric power and no hope of being put on a national utility grid."
http://www.self.org/shs_role.asp
"Approximately 400,000 families in the developing world are already using small, household solar PV systems to power fluorescent lights, radio-cassette players, 12 volt black-and-white TVs, and other small appliances. These families, living mostly in remote rural areas, already constitute the largest group of domestic users of solar electricity in the world."
Thirdly HP and all other technology leaders proved their worth on the market with quality products through innovation while the vaporware peddlers disappeared. We already have commercial success stories that are transforming lives however people such as Charles, with some sort of addiction to nuclear, are still peddling vaporware as if it was a done deal. It is not and will not be ready to be evaluated as a potential solution for at a minimum of 10 years. Sure lets fund an evaluation of LFTR however as we have a problem to solve and lets not get distracted by shiny new toys lets go hard with the easy ones first of negawatts, smart grids and renewables while developing things like LFTR into pilot scale plants where the long term viability can be assessed.
Here are some problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR#Molten-salt_cooled_reactors
"To date, most research has focused on FLiBe, because Lithium and Beryllium are reasonably effective moderators, and form a eutectic salt mixture with a lower melting point than each of the constituent salts."
Beryllium is extremely toxic - any escape of a quantity would be catastophic.
"Salts must be extremely pure initially, and would most likely be continuously cleaned in a large-scale molten salt reactor. Any water vapor in the salt will form hydrofluoric acid (HF) which is extremely corrosive."
So the reactor in the Republic on Congo with 33.3 revolutions per minute must somehow ensure quality.
"Instead, there is a vat and low-pressure pipes (for molten salt) constructed of thick sheet metal. The metal is an exotic nickel alloy that resists heat and corrosion, Hastelloy-N, but there is much less of it, and the thin metal is less expensive to form and weld."
So a vessel of exotic alloy has to be perfect every time.
Not that any of these are showstoppers as jet engines do work fine however they are some of the challenges that 10 years of operating a pilot plant will show.
I am not against any technology however by the time LFTRs are ready they may be not needed assuming we can get along with a bit less.
You'll be able to find any spill easily with a Geiger counter, or from a distance with a gamma camera. If something leaves the reactor, you'll know, but it'll freeze and you'll be able to scrape it off (with robotic tools).
This won't be a problem outside the reactor building; the stuff with fissionables and such in it will not get past the first heat exchanger. The MSRE had a secondary salt loop between the reactor and the radiator. That salt doesn't need to have e.g. beryllium in it, because it's not moderating anything.
Water vapor won't be an issue in a salt bath at 500°C under an argon blanket.
Not perfect, just good enough. Very small pinholes won't leak enough to be dangerous, and given surface tension and low pressures, they may not leak at all.
Given that the parts will mostly be factory-built, they can be tested using techniques like X-ray inspection, eddy-current testing and dye-penetration testing. You can pressurize pipes with helium and sweep for leaks. If you do find a leak after installation, you weld it up at the next maintenance shutdown.
If the reactors are mass-produced in a factory, there will be no obstacle to having all kinds of testing jigs and equipment on-site and used every day. Every piece can be tested and certified by people who don't have time to forget details because it's the job they go to every day. Once we know how to do it right, we can guarantee that it's done right every time.
"A bit less"? If you think dispensing with 80% (let alone 100%) of the fossil carbon used by the USA is "a little", you're smoking something.
EP - "You'll be able to find any spill easily with a Geiger counter, or from a distance with a gamma camera. If something leaves the reactor, you'll know, but it'll freeze and you'll be able to scrape it off (with robotic tools)."
Again if you read my posts you will notice that the theme is technology for all. This might be easy in the First World however a Third World reactor may not notice, have trained staff or any number of things and not pick up a spill.
"Given that the parts will mostly be factory-built, they can be tested using techniques like X-ray inspection, eddy-current testing and dye-penetration testing."
Again in the First World. As it is so critical one of the problems will be to ensure quality no matter where it is built. ie: The Republic on Congo does not produce many jet engines. My point is that renewables have forms, such as simple wind turbines, that can and are built in backyard workshops. If manufacturing LFTRs is restricted to the First World then we are just perpetuating the rich V poor inequality.
""A bit less"? If you think dispensing with 80% (let alone 100%) of the fossil carbon used by the USA is "a little", you're smoking something."
Again you jump to conclusions. Please refer to where I have said that we should give up 80% of our power network. I was of course referring to making energy savings by doing some things less, doing other things smarter, reducing the amount of energy it takes to do things and then think about replacing the remaining energy demand with up to an average of 70% renewables which is all we really need to do. The remaining 30% of average demand can be satisfied with natural gas, biomass gas, gasified coal and LFTR if indeed it is as good as they say. Additionally if LFTR is as good as Charles thinks then it will quickly overtake all the renewables in the 20 to 30 years it takes to go from a twinkle in an engineer's eye (as it is now) to commercial reactors in everyday operation in any country.
Perhaps you should give thought to not assuming that people that do not like nuclear power are not necessarily the neo hunter gatherer movement and actually have some intelligence.
If the third-worlders can't operate a plant themselves, someone is bound to put a plant or two on a barge, sail it over to them (probably under its own power), and rent it to them with an operations contract or just sell them electricity. Russia has been talking about that for a while, and it's bound to happen sooner or later.
Manufacturing semiconductors is essentially restricted to the First World. Lots of the Third World has cell phones anyway. What's your point? They don't need to make things locally to enjoy the fruits.
I said 80% because it's going to take that big a cut in CO2 emissions just to stabilize the atmosphere; we really need to get to zero, or below zero. We can't afford natural gas, let alone gasified coal. I don't think we're going to be able to update our installed base of stuff (aside from short-lived goods like vehicles) fast enough to get the efficiency you think we ought to have, and just slashing standard of living will give us a revolution, a collapse or both. Plus, electrification of transport will add demand now served by petroleum. This all adds up to lots of new electric generation required, and we need to meet it without GHG's. Wind and nuclear are the two biggies that scale.
The difference is that they have actually run LFTRs and, all the R&D on the basic technology is completed. Molten salt storage, the only serious mass storage, if is 'vaporware' as you state (and I tend to agree with you for now) is also a "have to wait for a shiny new toy" and that is what makes a renewable run grid vaporware.
RMI likes fossil. There is not getting around that. They work for fossil companies to greenwash them. Lovins admitted this on Democracy Now! a few months ago. Fine. Efficiency only based on a growth rate less than the the rate of increasing efficiency will work. No one has been able to do this, period. California shows this and we are the 'bestest and biggest' of the high-efficiency US regions per capita. Growth is unplanned, ergo efficiency is rolling the dice. Better to have efficiency combined with more than enough nuclear energy to back it up...
this is my point...that is the limit of your RMI and your vision Ender: POVERTY. Notice things like "Refrigerators" and "color TVs" and a LIGHT SWITCH are not mentioned. Your vision is to keep them poor like this. I see the scalable *cheap* LFTR and other Generation IV reactors as the basis and nucleus' of building REAL grids to provide REAL power, efficiently used, but always there, to raise people out of their poverty. Self.org thinks it quaint that packs of lead-acid batteries are sitting behind the chicken coop and we can schedule the whole village to come over to watch TV for an hour...I'm not. This is a reactionary vision. This is a recipe based on energy scarcity and it will breed the same civil wars and violence that have plagued Africa since Europeans colonized it.
There is no deployed LFTR technology. Charles is asking we support this vision. It is not a "tomorrow we have a thorium economy". No, it's that we understand that it takes more R&D and a national will to employ and then deploy such technology. That it has caught the eye of Jim Hansen and may others shows that we are making some *political* headway. We need to get behind this and see to it is deployed as the long term...and renewable solution...to our carbon based energy addiction.
David Walters
Ender,
"a more sensible approach to go with what we have now rather than wait for a shiny new toy"
Too often today that means coal. Wind/solar isn't cutting it. Coal plants are still being built. Why? Because it's 24/7 and a lot cheaper than wind/solar.
Europe has pushed wind/solar a lot harder than the US the last 20 yrs. Where are they now? Building more coal or nuclear. France is the example we should follow. Not Denmark.
Yes, it is too bad we have to wait for the LFTR shiny new toy. We should have gone down the LFTR path 40yrs ago when it was first proposed. If we don't do it now, you will be saying the same thing 10yrs from now.
"energy conservation and or energy efficiency"
The problem I have with this is it assumes there is a lot of "low hanging fruit" that people and businesses are too stupid to have implemented already. Many times what people mean when they say "energy efficiency is the answer" is someone should subsidize an investment in efficiency that can't be justified on a standard ROI basis.
Ender,
I would like to add.
We have existence proof of a country that is mostly nuclear for its electricity, France. By all reports it seems to work quite well. No co2, small dependence on foreign natural gas, competitive electricity rates ......
LFTR is a major improvement on a proven approach for the generation of electricity. Its actually a very low risk approach.
On the other hand we have no existence proof of any country which uses mostly wind/solar for its electricity.
The closest is maybe Denmark, 30% wind with electricity rates 3x France's?
So using France and Denmark as benchmarks, convince me that the US should commit itself to an electrical grid dominated by wind/solar.
Again, I'm fine with a goal of 10-15% for wind/solar. Let's see how it is working when we get that far.
Agreed. Oh, and it's 2x higher than in France, BTW.
The one common sense argument against this technology is it fosters the continuing decimation of other non-renewable and renewable resources.
The problem is not about how well the technology works. That is not relevant.
Let's conduct a thought experiment.
Let's pretend we are all-powerful genies and we give the ole lamp a rub, and we solve all the problems related to fusion, or some other big tech energy producer, doesn't matter. Heck we could call it Gonculation.
Now, let's get to serious work here and wish up all the power plants we need to replace all the power sources currently in use. Et voila! Infinite energy. Unfortunately, that was all the juju available and wish fulfillment is now unavailable.
What happens next?
Do we stop building cars? Roads? The all-hallowed ECONOMY, the infinite growth paradigm of compound interest demands you keep building stuff. That takes materials. Lots of materials. So, do we excavate every atom of metal to build stuff for the ever increasing population? And, should you suggest we will use some other material, it will still be used. It will still be used up.
Will we let exponential growth determine our population? When do we institute mandatory birth control? Many people love to point out that technology causes low birth rates. True. But the foot print of the westerner is 70 times that of the third world. That means the U.S. holds the third world footprint of 21 billion people. Do we then use the Gonculator to produce enough energy to raise them up to our standard? 6 Billion people times 70 (assuming no population growth) results in a world footprint population of 420 billion. I don't think we will have enough raw materials to outfit everyone with a nifty car and an Ipod.
We will have to feed these people. If actual population continues to double at the same exponential rate as before, we will be at 12 Billion in just a decade or two. Then 24 Billion in another decade. At what point will the food system fail? Will it fail before or after we have destroyed the planet for the other species we SHARE a planet with? The oceans are already decimated with little hope for resuscitation. If the oceans go, then I guess we will use the Gonculator to make more oxygen, right? I guess we will eventually simply become a scavenger society, recycling everything again and again for the privilege of owning a flat screen. Who needs wildlife when we got High-Def nature films?
Eventually, we will be shoulder to shoulder on the planet, front to back, a squirming mass of flesh, our mouths hooked up to feeding tubes, and our anuses and urethras connected to the great recycling machine. Due to "advances" in brain control and input, we will be fed continuous mental stimulation, perhaps, "Ow! My Balls!" or carefully crafted simulations of wilderness where we hike our avatars through simulated throngs of long-extinct animals and plants.
I've seen this somewhere before.
We know the engineers can continue the poisonous paradigm. What is particularly revolting is the belief that people who like the idea of bio-diversity and a healthy planet are somehow "against" humans. Whereas, I believe that those who are bent on saving the cars and tech at nature's expense are the ones "against" humanity. They are the destroyers.
I know that most scientists and engineers are smart, capable people, but, in my experience, to a large extent, they are not holistic thinkers. They seem not to notice the obvious side-effects and sometimes not even the direct effects. All tech seems to be built in a self-contained world of its own where raw materials are infinite and all problems unrelated to their particular techno-fantasy.
If we complain too much about their destructive tendencies, then we get two probable replies: A. you aren't one of us (i.e. a scientist or engineer) and therefore are not eligible to participate in determining how we rule the planet, or B. we will go into space and get stuff from "out there" and build a new civilization "out there." Great! Let's poison the rest of the universe. Besides the problematic physics behind that particularly noxious fantasy, it is highly unlikely we will be able to manage an ecosystem in space for any length of time when we cannot manage this ecosystem that has spent 6 billion years evolving in iteration after iteration to become a perfectly balanced system. In other words, we took a Swiss watch and turned it into stick in the ground sundial. And now we plan to make a perfect sustainable spaceship that reuses every molecule for the 1000 year journey to a new system. Yeah, right.
The problem is that we may actually fund such a program, not that we won't.
Quit trying to save the tech. Let's work on saving the humans, the wolves, the salmon, the planet--hell, everything that is ALIVE.
Brilliant comment, Cherenkov. I agree completely.
I find it ironic that the one person agreeing with Cherenkov's death post is someone named after the deadliest animal in Africa.
I find sad that your only comment to Cherenkov's post was that.
Scientists and engineers are just as human as you. Your description of them as "not holistic thinkers" is just a roundabout way of describing them as subhuman, as opposed to you, the enlightened one. And you assume that anything humans touch amounts to "poisoning."
You want to reject all technical solutions to our energy problems? That would involve human death on a massive scale.
Greg Barton: "Your description of them as "not holistic thinkers" is just a roundabout way of describing them as subhuman"
Cherenkov is saying nothing of the sort. He is saying that technical specialists tend to be narrowly focussed in their perception and processing of them. He made no comment on their relative worth or humanity.
Your view of his comments is a very narrow one. Are you trying to be funny in an enigmatic way?
And he (I assume) is not invoking death. He is trying to avert it rather than escalate a deferred reckoning.
For your information, we are transitioning to knowledge and service based economies. Also, smaller and better mobile phones constitute "growth". Growth is not measured in the mass of manufactured goods.
What would our footprint be if we stopped using fossil fuels, replacing them with the clean infinite energy source you talked about? A lot less, right? What if we used our infinite energy to create pipelines for desalinated water from the sea, instead of using so called "fossil" water? Infinite clean energy would mean we would have energy to do stuff in ways that has less or no environmental impact.
Then we already have the world footprint of a 100 billion or more, since at least a billion already lives as westerners. Or, in first world terms, our current 6 billion only have the footprint of about 2 billion. I think your way of counting is meaningless. The foot print stats are anyhow quite arbitrary and debated.
I do.
No, we won't - current population growth is just 1.1%, which is half the rate of the sixties. And the rate is still declining. (We also know that it will continue declining, because we know how many there are in the next child-bearing generation.)
No animal species lives in harmony with nature. They are all opportunistic and fill the space they are able and eat what they can. Our only chance of not being just another opportunistic animal species is economic growth and better tech. We already see it starting to work - given enough resources, we do constrain ourselves in ways animals don't - birth rates plummet, environmental rules gets stricter and so on. The question is, will it work fast enough to avoid collapse? If people like you succeed in slowing us down, it won't.
Hear hear. Repeat until understood!
Perhaps you haven't been watching the news lately. The "transitioning to knowledge and service based economies" is in the process of unwinding in virtually every economy of the world and all indicators seem to point to the process only accelerating.
Mamba the problem is that rather than saving humans you are condenming most of them to death with the approach you seem to be advocating if I understand your post correctly.
Your arguments are not new. They have been around since 1790 and at the time the made the same arguments and there were similar arguments since Plato's time.
Check out this link:
http://www.danielestulin.com/?op=noticias¬icias=ver&id=378
I saw somewhere up thread that someone had suggested this cycle could be used for CHP. Anyone care to explain how there would never be any chance there could be some radioactive steam in your steam distribution system that could easily come into contact with humans such as in direct humidifcation systems using CHP distribution steam?
Well, one way is if you have the steam distribution side of your heat exchanger always be at higher pressure than the reactor side of the heat exchanger (idea: have the entire power plant below atmospheric pressure). In truth, some fool could eventually find a way to bollix this up, fools can be very clever sometimes. However, you are probably misting yourself with alot more radon-based radioactivity in your morning shower than you will ever get from commercial nuclear power. Don't worry though, most people's health could use more radon exposure, despite what the regulations say (hormesis: see epidemiological radon study by B. Cohen).
Dear Ms/Mr Cherenkov, I believe (I don't have a reference) but believe that statistics show that in all societies over time, family size falls as standards of living rise. There exists, also, a very direct positive relationship between broad availablity of low cost energy and rising of standards of living.
So it would seem to me, that the imperative is not only to do develop LFTR technology, but to do this ASAP in order to stabilize population on this wonderful earth that we all share AND to spread this technology globally as fast as we possibly can.
TF
Dear Tigersfamily
Can you explain the enormously high birth rates in the Arab nations?
They have abundant cheap energy and high standards of living.
Fact is, the Demographic Transition Theory is a myth.
Just like the convenient notion now being insinuated (by others, not you Mr Tiger) that Cherenkov is a human hating nutter.
In fact he is far from such demonic extremity. He actually cares about quality of life rather than the mad game of quantity which has spawned from energy surfeit. He rightfully wants to know how this human explosion, and all of its genuinely horrific consequences, might possibly be stopped if we lift the lid off of another sugar bowl?
Are we better, more circumspect in our application of energy, than yeast Mr Tiger?
If not we should be very careful as to how much sugar we make available.
They do not have "enormously high" birth rates! They have plummeted from 6-7 children per woman to 2-3.5 children per woman. Their rates are still plummeting!
(The lingering problem with these countries are that their women are, to a great degree, sex and household slaves. This is slowly improving, though.
It is simply a model that seems to fit reality for now. As long as birth rates keep plummeting, I can't see any reasons for implementing authoritarian birth reduction measures as long as increased prosperity, technology and education does the trick.
Yeah. Tigersfamily forgot to add "and religion gets pitched in the trash where it belongs".
Everett, the primary heat exchange would be between the radioactive salts, and non radioactive salts, A secondary heat exchange would carry heat between the secondary non radioactive salt fluid and gasses which would transfer the heat to power generating closed cycle turbins. LFTR's can be designed to control themselves, and human controls should be minimal to elemnate human error.
(dup deleted)
I suggested some time back that the appropriate place to put nuclear plants was beneath cities so that the exhaust steam could be used for space heat and/or absorption chillers. This would be about as benign as you could get; the spent steam would be at least one loop removed from the reactor itself, and perhaps more. If you were driving an absorption chiller, you'd have another two layers of steel between the steam and living space; a hot water radiator would give you just one, but isn't that enough?
One of the most important questions is whether NIMBY concerns wouldn't be a huge showstopper to that idea.
Wouldn't that be NUMBY, Not Under My Back Yard? ;-)
I think it would succeed in addressing most of people's objections (a plant buried in rock couldn't be hit by an airplane and would already be sealed up if it had an accident) and giving people a direct benefit in the form of clean and inexpensive heat would attract buy-in.
My experience is that people might support it, until a project actually gets serious and gets started. Then a lot of people can chicken out. NIMBY is not about being rational, unfortunately.
EP - "Manufacturing semiconductors is essentially restricted to the First World. Lots of the Third World has cell phones anyway. What's your point? They don't need to make things locally to enjoy the fruits.'
Guess why they like mobile phones? Because they do not have the wired infrastructure so they leapfrogged into wireless. Large central power plants in these countries have the same problem. Making things locally lets countries be less dependant on the rich nations for their destiny and they also can lessen their trade imbalances.
dwalters - "The difference is that they have actually run LFTRs and, all the R&D on the basic technology is completed. Molten salt storage, the only serious mass storage, if is 'vaporware' as you state (and I tend to agree with you for now) is also a "have to wait for a shiny new toy" and that is what makes a renewable run grid vaporware."
Right so lets see the results of that experience and post the operating Thorium molten salt reactor and we can all see it. Thermal storage has already been used in Solar Two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Two
"Solar Two used molten salt, a combination of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate, as an energy storage medium instead of oil or water as with Solar One. This helped in energy storage during brief interruptions in sunlight due to clouds. The molten salt also allowed the energy to be stored in large tanks for future use such as night time."
"this is my point...that is the limit of your RMI and your vision Ender: POVERTY. Notice things like "Refrigerators" and "color TVs" and a LIGHT SWITCH are not mentioned."
So in your vision the poor people are given reactors to run their plasma televisions? Renewables are scalable. You start with the small scale solar PV in a village and build to a larger system without throwing out the old. You like many others before you that have built grandiose projects that are supposed to bring wealth to the locals that have founded and only ended up benefited the ruling elite. In most cases the crippling loans that these projects need end up creating the poverty not the lack of energy. The poor end up starving to pay back the world bank.
Charles H - "The problem I have with this is it assumes there is a lot of "low hanging fruit" that people and businesses are too stupid to have implemented already. Many times what people mean when they say "energy efficiency is the answer" is someone should subsidize an investment in efficiency that can't be justified on a standard ROI basis."
No there is still low hanging fruit. Most people get to a price point where more saving are not cost effective because energy is not priced correctly. Make the energy more costly and include externialities like carbon emissions and suddenly a whole lot more efficiency becomes cost effective.
"We have existence proof of a country that is mostly nuclear for its electricity, France. By all reports it seems to work quite well. No co2, small dependence on foreign natural gas, competitive electricity rates ......"
Except peaking power from Sweden and Denmark when the wind is strong. France works because it is interconnected into a wider European grid. France also works because it is a government run energy system that does not have to make a profit. As its peaking power is gas fired if it can't get pumped hydro it will suffer like the rest of Europe with the gas shortage.
"On the other hand we have no existence proof of any country which uses mostly wind/solar for its electricity.
The closest is maybe Denmark, 30% wind with electricity rates 3x France's? "
And again do I need to remind you that France's electricity price is set by the Government so they can undercut whoever they like. Denmark's windfarms are mainly commercial so there is no comparison.
So are LFTR going to be commercial concerns or are you asking for handouts and subsidies? Then the question is (like the hole in my bucket) why should a pie in the sky concept like LFTR that will take 10 years to prove get funds and subsidies when other more mature technologies that can do the job are ready to go? All this to comfort people that think the only way to generate electricity reliably is to use big power plants. Sort of like mainframe people I used to talk to 15 years ago. Are you typing on a mainframe terminal at the moment?
Renewables are scalable?
You can keep repeating a lie all you want. Doesn't make it truth.
You keep calling the LFTR "vapor ware." Scalable renewables is vapor ware. Renewables are not scalable today.
Renewables are definitely scalable. Germany increased electricity production from renewables (mainly wind) from 6% in 2000 to 14% in 2007 (% of total electricity production).
Wind is already at close to 100 GW nameplate capacity, and adding 30 - 40% per year. With an onshore capacity factor of 28%, this corresponds to at least 10 1 GW non-existing LFTR plants, just to beat the added capacity.
In 20 years solar will be competitive even in less sunny climates, and annual additions already reached 4 GW.
These discussions about molten salt storage somehow suggest it's the only method. There's a whole range of alternatives, including established hydroelectric energy storage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage). As for wind, a DC-link between Norway and The Netherlands already allows evening out demand peaks or wind ebbs, using the abundant Norwegian hydropower.
LFTR doesn't exist now, it will take at least 20 years to develop without the certainty that it will ever work, will be financially viable, or politically acceptable. The finnish experience with Olkiluoto shows that even building established technology nuclear power is an absolute disaster.
I think these are very good points and it's one of the things that I can't agree on with the nuclear radicalists. They use the same type of ideology to bash on renewables that they are claiming most of the renewable protagonists are suffering from and that's hurting society. The pot calls the kettle black as we say. Renewables are definately scalable. Well most of them are. Wind is probably going to add a lot of kWhs more than new gen3+ plants, considering the difference in learning curves. And intermittency needn't be a huge problem, it's just an economic variable that can be quantified. From what I've read so far, even without storage, very large amounts of wind in grids will still be cheap. There are also a lot of advancements in wind tech that are already happening now, whereas LFTR isn't going anywhere without government support. Even so, under a crash program, LFTR might be available in multi GWe sizes. We should at least try this, only a couple of billion, and find out what happens. I think LFTR has great potential but when it comes to the facts, what's more proven, cheaper, environmentally friendly, etc. wind has all the cards, for now.
Yes, but however much it grows now, it won't surpass 20% of total production.
Well, but to beat added consumption, we would need 50 per year, not 10. Actually, to be in good shape in the year 2050, the world better start building more than a hundred new nuclear plants every year.
Abundance is a relative term. World hydro is at about 16%, and much is already used for load following. However you do it, wind won't exceed 20%.
Sorry, but this is horse manure. The Finns asked for lots of non-standard security design and this plant was the first of its kind and the first in a long time for them. There is cost overruns, but they are still planning more reactors, so they don't share your view. Furthermore, the french and the japanese know how to build on time and on budget, so other countries can too. Then it's a fact that many wind power projects have great delays and cost overruns.
This has been refuted numerous times even in this thread. Most people read this somewhere and believe it as a fact, while there is no analytical basis for such an argument. There are no real hard limits even in the absence of storage. Just quantifiable economics. See decarolis and keith: the economics of large scale wind in a carbon constrained world. Mentioned here plenty of times. Let's get over this newspaper rhetoric. Facts are preferable over ideology.
To me, 'scalable' is a problem word. I don't know what is really means, but it seems to mean that a process, whatever its size, can be done at a larger scale, if need be. But it can't really mean that, because nothing that exists can be 'scale' through a gross (144) of orders-of-magnitude. So does it mean that it can be grown from its current size to 2x larger? Or 10x larger? Or what?
I suppose it is, maybe, that it can be grown from its current, inconsequential size to something that really makes a difference in the larger scheme of things. But what is that? IMHO, it is a not-so-useful word.
" "On the other hand we have no existence proof of any country which uses mostly wind/solar for its electricity.
The closest is maybe Denmark, 30% wind with electricity rates 3x France's? "
And again do I need to remind you that France's electricity price is set by the Government so they can undercut whoever they like. Denmark's windfarms are mainly commercial so there is no comparison" "
Even if I am huge fan of wind farms, this statement is absolutly uncorrect. French electricity price is not set by government, nor nuclear plants get subsidies from it, while Denmark's wind is instead heavily subsidied by their own government. This is a well-know thruth, at least in Europe
Denmark indeed has an inefficient bureaucratic electric market, and with a lot of distorting inefficient subsidy systems. The wind resource in Denmark isn't exactly world class either. Also, it's first mover cost on wind are high, but with wind having an excellent learning rate, the investment is strategical. And it's more like 2x difference electric rates:
As a final post out of a quite good discussion I will certainly surprise a lot of people and agree that the LFTR is quite good technology and should receive funding with the other alternatives. Charles will probably have noticed that my usual nuclear attack profile of waste and proliferation is severely limited when discussing Thorium reactors. They are not a proliferation threat and do not produce long lived dangerous waste. 500 years is still a long time however in the scheme of things it is manageable.
If I had a choice today of replacing our horrible brown coal with LFTR and that was the only alternative then I would jump at the chance. My main objection to the whole article was the LFTR was presented as the silver bullet. Please all repeat after me there are no silver bullets. During the discussion which has been conducted in a fine spirit BTW we have progressed from silver bullet to integral part of an overall solution.
So lets see how LFTR goes while doing the hard things of energy efficiency gains, using less energy, making the grid smart, putting in storage and replacing carbon emitting technologies with zero carbon technologies and electrify transport. Lets not forget that we have two problems to solve - Peak Oil and Global Warming. Fortunately we can do both with the same things. So when the LFTR is ready in 10 years or so we can displace the natural gas etc at the bottom of the energy chain with renewables doing the bulk if it turns out that they can do it.
Research into LFTR should produce better salts for solar energy storage as a spin off. Also as LFTR uses gas turbines rather than steam, as long as the thermal problems are OK as Charles has promised, they can be slotted into the smart grid with automatic controls something thermal nuclear or thermal coal can never do. The storage required for renewables will benefit all generating technologies as batteries are being added today to smooth the grid.
Despite being a one eyed greenie I am able to appreciate that all nuclear is not the same and the renewables are not the complete answer.
Finally just in case you missed it "THERE ARE NO SILVER BULLETS"
Thanks for the interesting discussion - it has given me a lot to think about.
Not really worth arguing about. Until there's a working LFTR the proponents have bupkiss. I can take a twenty minute drive and look at a wind turbine.
You want a "paradigm change" you have to have something besides vaporware.
On BBC Knowledge last night Helium-3 was being sold as the savior of the planet.
Lots of it on the Moon though and not the Earth, so it will be interesting how this is approached in the New Financial Paradigm :-)
"There are no silver bullets."
A constant refrain. Tell me where this is proven then if you wish for I would like to follow the reasoning of such a statement.
Its seems to be told as a universal truth. Is there such a thing as a universal truth....like this ;
"THERE ARE NO UNIVERSAL TRUTHS.".....repetition doesn't make it so.
Why are there no good solutions then? Oh alwasys a side effect one might say..but how onerous or degree of said side effect?
We might could say that using human manure and urine is a replacement for fertilizer and I might suggest that if each and every person on the planet did so then we might see very beneficial results in our average soil fertility.....ok..now why is this not a 'silver bullet'?
Its maybe more of a silver bb but thats just a sizing factor.
Enlighten me if you would. Please.
Airdale
airdale - ""THERE ARE NO UNIVERSAL TRUTHS.".....repetition doesn't make it so."
So therefore the statement ""THERE ARE NO UNIVERSAL TRUTHS."" means that your statement is invalid because if there ARE no universal truths then your statement that "there are no universal truths" is false.
Just saying ........ :-)
Limits due to thermodynamics. We don't create energy, we harness it.
Limits due to mass conservation. We don't create things, instead we temporarily acquire and recombine them using the limited energy we harness.
Limits due to infrastructure dependence. Liebig minimums for the things we make, including making more people. As well as specific dependence for energy sources; we can't eat wood or put thorium in our gas tanks. Every single piece of technology we create or use has immediately limited options for energy use.
Limits due to time.
Limits due to system complexity vs. human capacity to abstract the complexity. Here is the crushing blow. Our ability to understand does not measure up to the complex and chaotic systemic interactions of individual cognition, group dynamics, an inter-networked society with nearly 6.8 billion nodes, an ecology with tens of millions of species, wrapped in planet-wide oceanic and atmospheric fluid dynamics.
In other words, we don't fully understand our own brains, how we interact, how our society really functions, our interdependency in a time of overpopulation, or the specifics of the ecosystem which supports us. Even if we understood the differentially-driven processes, if we had the correct models, we still wouldn't have accurate data with which to functionally manage and accurately predict.
These are why there are no silver bullets.
Some basics here, which it's pretty obvious some commenters know and others don't.
The energy contained in the fissionable/fertile actinide metals is one terawatt-day/ton metal (this is a 15-inch cube of metal). World electrical generation capability is about 1.4 terawatts. In order to extract all the energy, the breeding ratio must be greater than 1 in converting fertile to fissionable isotopes (if you stick with thermal neutron reactors). This requires reprocessing in some form.
In order to obtain the maximum thermodynamic efficiency, the temperature must be as high as possible; (T1-T2)/T1 (temperatures in Kelvin or Rankine degrees). This is the Carnot efficiency, and is the maximum possible in any thermal system (heat engine). Real systems are always somewhat less efficient. The upper temperature, T1, is imposed by materials; at this time, the highest operating temperature heat engine is the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, with a turbine inlet temperature of 3600F (1982C). Modern steam plants run at about 1000F. Modern combined cycle electrical plants use a gas turbine topping cycle and a steam bottoming cycle, for a thermodynamic efficiency of around 60%.
Also, if the reactor outlet temperature is above 850C, it is possible to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen by the sulfur-iodine cycle. In the extreme case, hydrogen can be used to do carbon-neutral conversion of carbonate rock (limestone) into hydrocarbons. This synthesis can be directed to particular products.
Given the above, there are a number of nuclear reactor systems that are attractive, some with fairly extensive operating histories. The ones currently being explored (low funding) are covered in the GEN IV Initiative.
Current nuclear plants are classified Generation 2, are legacy systems based on Admiral Rickover's nuclear navy work of the 1940's and 1950's, and tend to be botique designs rather than mass-produced. Because of their high-pressure design and size, they are fairly difficult to produce, complicated to refuel, and had runaway cost problems with engineering retrofits post-Three Mile Island. Their safety record and operating availability are exemplary.
A novel concept for dealing with global warming is at Jim Holm's http://www.coal2nuclear.com/ He proposes to replace the coal-fired boilers of existing coal plants with modular nuclear reactors, killing a flock of birds with one stone. For a number of reasons, his reactor preference is the pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR), but the concept can be generalized to any of the high temperature reactors. Holm is an engineer, and his site has a lot of technical considerations and references. (It's also under constant revision, and looks it - be patient)
On a very broad perspective, individual human freedom is proportional to the available energy; someone with only their muscles and a stick for digging holes to put seeds in isn't very free. Energy IS freedom. The folks at http://left-atomics.blogspot.com/ (LFTR enthusiasts), once you get past the Marxist cant, have the right idea; "Power To The People!"
Thanks to Charles Barton and others for a good exposition on LFTRs. The fact that there's a lot more energy in the thorium in coal than there is in the coal itself is both hilarious and disgusting.
One best energy discussions yet here. Thanks to Charles and Gail for initiating it.
Final comments as we run down on the discussion.
"Silver Bullets". Actually, in this case, it's a "Thorium Bullet". I always wonder why people think that there is no such think as a 'silver bullet'. There is absolutely no rationale behind this. I've noted in other places (and having worked a power plant operator at one of them) that if the world was geologically like Clearlake County in California where PG&E built the first base-load geothermal power plants out to 2000 MWs, we would have a "Geothermal Silver Bullet". Those conditions do not exist, generally.
However, if the promise of the LFTR can be implemented, it simply can be such a "Thorium Bullet" because there is virtually no form of energy it cannot produce. Lets say, for example, that concentrated solar plants could be developed with cheap storage for it's thermal heat and it's footprint didn't rasie objections and we had a cheaply deployed HVDC network and it COULD provide all the electric power we need? Then would could TEAR DOWN every wind turbine in the US as there simply would be no point to maintaining them when CSP could do the job. The same is true with the LFTR.
There are no working LFTRs anyway. No one is arguing there is. No one is arguing we should start building one, breaking ground, pouring concrete, tomorrow. Nobody, it's a straw man argument. The proposal is to start developing them by using a few hundred million dollars a year to set up the necessary research infrastructure to develop a commercially deployable LFTR. (Really "Relaunch" it). That as a society we make the political decision to do this, and use the "Manhattan Project" idea toward doing so, in the *exact same way* renewable advocates believe we should do to stop and reverse CO2 output.
David
Are we missing some posts? I posted a couple of comments that are not here anymore.
Sorry - found them
There is too much discussion for me to read it all, but nevertheless I have an opinion:
LFTR is interesting as a way to use nuclear power - without some of the negatives usually assumed to be unavoidable accidents of nuclear power. Most of the objections to LFTR that I understand seem to be centered on the appearance that 'solves' our energy problem, which is 'insolvable' in some world views.
This 'contradiction' is dangerous to persons who wish to control the future. I think it does have a problem in that anything that works to supply us with energy can encourage us to allow our population to increase. This increase is unwise because eventually the thorium will be transmuted, and gone. It is not a renewable resource like biomass. IMHO, our descendents will eventually have to deal with an Earth that has carrying capacity from biological resources, and other solar resources alone. I think we should try to avoid a growth of population that goes much beyond what can be reduced to sustainable in a managed, socially acceptable way i.e. die off from old age, not from wars and genocide. I don't think there is much chance of my desires being honored by future generations, but I hope this issue is considered. Eventually the human race will have consumed all the non-renewable mineral resources. What then? Life will go on, but what of the transition? Perhaps we can guide future generations into a path that is less painful.
Lots of interesting discussions: Much of it centers around "LFTR is not proven technology..." Totally agree. Chill out... and think about my earlier comment... Relaxed? ReadY?
Now... Would those of you who now agrue AGAINST investing a modest amount of money to develop LFTR technolgy have said NO 15 years ago to investing a modest amount of money that now allows this wonderful forum, the INTERNET? WHO among us could have foreseen the power of this wonderful mechanism to allow us all, from all corners of the earth to have this MAGNIFICENT debate about another NEW and interesting and potentially fantastically beneficial technology? I am guessing that most of us, IF asked THEN, might have said NO, WASTE OF MONEY... But look what we got !
Think about it... It's pretty darn cool to me... I see Africa, Iran, China, America, France, UK and lots of other countries represented here.
geek7 i lack the wisdom to make choices for people who live in the future, but i ought to offer them optioons from which to choose. LFTR technology is out there already, and sooner or later it will be developed. None of us can stop that, and why would we even want to try.
Advanced economies have far lower birth rates than underdeveloped economies. Given the economic interdependence of nations with advanced economies, war between them grows increasingly impossible. Advancedeconomies also have the resources to eliminate much pollution, and the electrification of transportation made possible electricity produced by LFTR technology, will greatly reduce fossil fuel derived pollution. Finally land use practices in underdeveloped societies often lead to far more serious environmental problems than those created by more advanced societies.
This increase is unwise because eventually the thorium will be transmuted, and gone. It is not a renewable resource like biomass.
As the Sun ages, it grows brighter. In about 500 million years or so, it will be bright enough to make life here quite uncomfortable, if not lethal. In a billion years or so, most of the oceans will have boiled off -- effectively terminating the chemical experiment called "life".
http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/toast.html
Now, even if no new source of energy is developed (e.g., fusion), there is enough thorium and uranium to last that interval. And if we do manage to run out of the stuff, we can start gnawing at the Moon:
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=5357
I think we need to be honest here: if a resource is going to outlive life on this planet, it is as "renewable" as sunlight or wind or geothermal.
As I've said many times here, my view of the future is a 'distribution', dominated in the interquartile by declining net energy and increasing human resource habituation conflict. But there are tails, and successful thorium, if not water constrained and if human consumption drives were somehow channeled into more healthy pursuits, would be on the right tail. IOW, this would be the natural increase in energy density and higher energy surplus per capita. I am skeptical, for numerous reasons but do admit a sliver of hope for this path. We need to discuss this more.
Good to see a post on here that offers a solution rather than a doomsday scenario. China and India are the big hope for nuclear power because there is no environmental lobby to hold back progress.
Glad we could oblige.
In many circumstances though, hope breeds complacency. 'Thorium will solve it - I can go back to being disengaged and focus on my pheasant hunting skills...etc.'
And for the record, in the last 100 posts I would say the majority offer hope and NONE outline a doomsday scenario. I guess the semantics of 'solution' and 'doomsday' are different for everyone.
Nate, some of us have long memories of the "relocalization" posts.
there are many possible futures. energy is an important human need. 'relocalization' means different things to different people. just because some people abhor the implications of what relocalizing would mean to their own lives does not mean its a topic of 'doom'. I would argue that living more locally (meaning food and friends) will make the average human both happier and healthier irrespective of whether we have an energy surplus or gap. but that is a discussion for another thread. thanks for your intro to thorium. I learned some new things. I also am well aware that even if thorium were to scale to 4,000 plants worldwide that it would do so in the face of immense net energy loss in oil and gas- i.e. it needed to be started 10+ years ago. To dismiss relocalization as a strategy would be just as much folly as dismissing thorium as an option.
Well said
Nate Life in Texas Summers without air conditioning is as good a definition of doom aas i can think of. That is why I included mass production of LFTRs and a plan for rapid deployment usin fissionable materials from weapons stockpiles and "nuclear waste." Lets hope that thoseLFTRs keep Texas Air Conditioners running because T. Boone Pickens windmills wont.
Xenon may be a noble gas but under irradiation it will form fluoride compounds. Besides that I feel the molten salt reactor is the most prefect rector design: simple, easy to prevent meltdown, extremely easy fuel processing and reprocessing, capable of high temperatures.