Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
Number 3 – Misrepresentation and Inefficiency
When wind advocates promote the glories of wind power, they use numbers based on the windmill’s nameplate rating, its maximum capacity – as in a February 20, 2015 Earth Watch article, which said, “…the total amount of wind power available… has grown to 318,137 megawatts in 2013.”
They Don’t Last LongSusceptible to Weather Storms
But because wind power is intermittent, windfarms usually generate an average output of about 33% of their capacity, which is why 318,137 megawatts is very misleading, and 95,000 would be more accurate, perhaps even generous. Thus, when they say that windmills can supply xxxxxxx homes, they are usually talking about the cumulative plate ratings on the generators – the output under ideal conditions, not the average amount of electricity they really produce.
Neither solar nor wind can deliver the 24/7 “baseload” power that is provided by nuclear plants plus hydropower, natural gas, oil and coal. Of those five, only nuclear power plants (despite Chernobyl, a plant deemed to be “illegal” everywhere else in the world), have been safely delivering carbon dioxide-free power for more than fifty years. (Wind also can’t handle cold weather.)
Great Britain, faced with building 12 nuclear plants or the 30,000 1-MW windmills needed to provide an equal amount of power, chose nuclear. And Japan, which closed its nuclear plants due to post-Fukushima panic, has begun to reactivate them, which will reduce the thousands of tons of CO2 they’ve been dumping into our atmosphere by burning methane [‘Natural’ Gas].
Germany, which over-reacted by closing nuclear plants in favour of wind and solar, is paying almost four times more for electricity than nuclear France. And with its industries hurting, the Merkel government has begun to rethink nuclear power. While they debate, they are creating more CO2 by burning lignite, the dirtiest member of the coal family.
“Fake and Vulgar”, climate news from Germany “…Germany’s wind turbines as a whole ran at between 0 to 10% of their rated capacity 45.5% of the time…! The turbines, which the German government says will become The “workhorse” of the German power industry, ran at over 50% of their rated capacity only… 5.2% of the time.”
Germany “paid” for the top line of the following graph, but only got the dark blue spikes. The light blue area is primarily supplied by burning carbon, which worsens Climate Change. (Every megawatt of wind generation capacity requires at least another MW of natural gas or coal generation for backup.)
In Germany, more and more wind turbines are being dismantled. The reason: subsidies are running out, the material is worn out… dismantling is extremely complex and expensive.
Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
Number 2 – Tilted Economics
I understand why power companies cooperated with the rush to wind power. For one thing, renewables were demanded by a misinformed public led by many of the “green” organisations whose goals I support, but not their methods.
33% efficient windmills have received subsidies of USD 56 per Megawatt hour. In comparison, 90% efficient nuclear power, which critics say is “too expensive,” receives just USD 3 per Megawatt hour.
Even the wind companies and Warren Buffett admit that without the subsidies, they’d be losers: “…on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” (2014)
“…on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
“Most cost estimates for wind power disregard the heavy burden of these subsidies on US taxpayers. But if Americans realised the full cost of generating energy from wind power, they would be less willing to foot the bill – because it’s more than most people think.
“Over the past 35 years, wind energy – which supplied just 4.4% of US electricity in 2014 – has received USD 30 billion in federal subsidies and various grants. These subsidies shield people from the truth of just how much wind power actually costs and transfer money from average taxpayers to wealthy wind farm owners, many of which are units of foreign companies….”
“Nuclear’s production tax credit (PTC) of 1.8 cents/kWhr is not indexed for inflation. PTCs for other low carbon energies are indexed. The PTC for wind is 2.3 cents/kWhr.
“Plants must be placed in service before January 1, 2021. Thanks to Nuclear Regulatory Comm. slowness, that practically eliminates any PTC for new nuclear power.
“Do you know about “renewable portfolio standards”? If government cares about young people and nature, why are these not “carbon-free portfolio standards”?
“This is a huge hidden subsidy, reaped by only renewables. There is a complex array of financial incentives for renewables. Incentives include the possibility of a 30% investment tax credit in lieu of the PTC, which provides a large “time-value-of-money” advantage over a PTC spread over 8-10 years, accelerated 5-year depreciation, state and local tax incentives, loan guarantees with federal appropriation for the “credit subsidy cost.
“Nuclear power, in contrast, must pay the full cost of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license review, at a current rate of USD 272 per professional staff hour, with no limit on the number of review hours. The cost is at least USD 100-200 million. The NRC takes a minimum of 42 months for its review, and the uncertainty in the length of that review period is a major disincentive.”
“When supply is high and demand is low, spot prices generally fall — this is especially true in markets with high shares of renewable energy. What precipitates negative pricing are conditions which encourage energy producers to sell at an apparent loss, knowing that in the longer term [thanks largely to huge taxpayer subsidies] they will still profit. “The Texas grid is managed by the energy agency of the same name… The market functions through auctions, where energy producers place a competitively priced bid to supply some amount of energy at a particular time and particular price… “Various subsidies, including our U. S. federal production tax credits and state renewable energy certificates, compensate wind power producers… to such an extent that it allows wind farms to continue to make money even when selling at negative prices.”
From Clean Technica – October, 2015
We are all paying hidden costs to prop up these inefficient, deadly “alternatives” that depend on methane [Natural Gas] to produce 70% of their rated power, even though the methane [Natural Gas] leakage from fracking and the distribution system are erasing any benefits we hoped to get by avoiding coal. Furthermore, the price quoted for a nuclear plant includes the cost of decommissioning, but it isn’t for the thousands of windmills or solar farms that only last about 20 years.
In fact, the deck has been stacked against nuclear power by “green” profiteers and carbon lobbyists who know they cannot compete with 90% efficient, CO2-free nuclear power. Still, despite the bureaucratic handicaps on nuclear power and the support given to renewables, nuclear power is financially competitive, as the following chart reveals.
Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
It’s not just birds and bats that suffer. According to the Caithness Windfarm Information Forum, “Just in England, there were 163 wind turbine accidents that killed 14 people in 2011, which translates to about 1000 deaths per billion kilowatt-hours.
“In contrast, during 2011 nuclear energy produced 90 billion kWhrs in England with NO deaths and America produced 800 billion kWhrs via nuclear with NO deaths.”
Why is it almost sacrilegious for the Sierra Club and its clones to rethink windmills, and why do they refuse to watch presentations that compare the records of their “green” alternative energy sources to the record of CO2-free nuclear power? Could $$$ be involved? (In 2012, TIME magazine reported that the Sierra Club secretly accepted USD 26 million from Chesapeake Energy – an oil company.)
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh report that 117 of world’s 200,000 windmills burn every year – far more than the 12 reported by wind farm companies. Even more throw their blades or have them torn off by climate change storms.
Why hasn’t our media featured this image of two Dutch engineers waiting to die? (It’s been available for years.) One jumped to his death. The other burned to death.
“The accident with Daan and Arjan was already five years ago. It is sad that still no or insufficient measures have been taken to guarantee safety.”
Why hasn’t our media published easily available images of burning windmills, windmills that have toppled over and windmills that have thrown their blades more than a third of a mile?
U. S. Insurance claims for 2018 reveal that blade damage and gearbox failures cost the industry USD 340,000 and USD 480,000 respectively. Claims associated with windmill foundations have averaged USD 1,800,000 per year, reaching USD 3,200,000 in 2018 due to extreme circumstances.
For examples of the opposition we encounter from many “greens” please see these excellent articles:
As mentioned near the end of Chapter seven – and repeated here for emphasis – when we include the positive medical data that was accumulated over thirty years from Pripyat and the region around Chernobyl, the worldwide death print for wind is 115 times worse than the death print or nuclear power, 340 times worse for solar, 3,000 times worse for natural gas and 27,000 times worse for oil.
Nuclear power is even safer than ‘benign” hydropower, which has a huge carbon footprint because of the energy needed to manufacture the cement in its concrete, and because reservoirs create large amounts of methane. (See Hydro’s Dirty Secret Revealed by Duncan Graham-Rowe.)
Furthermore, people who are forced to live close to windmills have complained of severe sleep deprivation, chronic stress, dizziness and vertigo caused by low frequency noise and inaudible noise below 20 Hz, known as infrasound.
Despite these problems, those who profit from selling, repairing and building short-lived, inefficient, wind and solar farms have no interest in replacing coal-burning power plants with highly efficient, environment- friendly, ultra-safe, Generation III+ reactors or Molten Salt Reactors that cannot melt down, cannot generate the hydrogen that exploded at Chernobyl and Fukushima – and can even consume much of our stored nuclear “waste” as fuel.
With these facts in mind, how can “environmentalists” support wind farms that require carbon-burning backup generators, have only a 20-year lifespan, are difficult to recycle and have larger death prints than nuclear power, which operates 24/7, has a much smaller carbon footprint, a 60-year lifespan, is 90% efficient, requires very little land, and kills no birds or bats?
Coming up next week, Episode 26 – Tilted Economics – Public Fund Pillaging
Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
Blowin’ Wind
I was thrilled when the first windmills appeared on the Laurentian Divide near my hometown of Virginia, Minnesota, but a few years later, having noticed a significant amount of “down time,” I checked on wind power’s record with the help of my new associates in the Thorium Energy Alliance and discovered that the windmill industry had been selling more sizzle than steak.
During the “green” search for energy alternatives, which was guided by an “anything but nuclear” bias, the Sierra Club and others to which I once belonged took pains to define what was “renewable” and what was not. In so doing, they deliberately (and ironically), excluded CO2-free nuclear power, even though we have enough uranium and thorium to last 100,000 years.
Because those who profit from wind and solar said nothing about their carbon footprints, environmental damage, resource use, inefficiency, bird, bat and human deaths (death prints) and the need for huge subsidies, we drank their Kool-Aid, and now wonder why it’s making us sick. Well, here’s why, from many points of view.
Number 1 – Safety
Windmills kill 1 million birds and 1 million bats per year, even as insect borne diseases like Zika, dengue fever and malaria are increasing. (Bats can be killed by just getting too close to the low pressure area that accompanies each blade, which ruptures their lungs) How “green” is that?
Don’t these “environmentalists” care that, according to Science magazine, a “single colony of 150 brown bats has been estimated to eat nearly 1.3 million disease-carrying insects each year”? Shouldn’t they know that, according to the US Geological Survey, bats consume harmful pests that feed on crops, providing about USD 23 billion in benefits to America’s agricultural industry every year?
A modern, 1 GW LWR generates 9,000,000 kWhrs per year which, at 10 cents per kWhr, creates revenue of USD 900,400,000 per year. Deduct USD 220 million for operating expenses for a profit of USD 680 million per year. California’s Diablo nuclear plant generates electricity for about 3 cents per kWhr.
If the plant’s two reactors cost USD 7 billion, their combined profit will repay the 7 billion in 5.7 years, after which they will net USD 1.3 billion/year while employing about 1,000 well-paid workers.
While we temporise, Russia and South Korea are building modular reactors (conventional and MSRs), for sale abroad, some of which will be mounted on barges that can be towed to coastal cities, thus making long transmission lines, with their 10% power loss, unnecessary. In 2020, the first of these barges began operation in Pevek, a town in eastern Siberia. (China makes a 1 GWe reactor for USD 3B in less than 5 years – Dr. Alex Cannara.)
In 2016, Russia inaugurated a commercial Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) that extracts nearly 100% of the energy value of uranium. (LWRs utilize less than 5%.) The FBR creates close to zero waste and guarantees that we will never run out of thorium, uranium and plutonium, which yield 1.7 million times more energy per kilogram than crude oil.
Instead of pursuing these profitable programs, we [USA] have spent USD 400 billion on worthless F-35 jet fighters plus USD 2 billion PER WEEK in Afghanistan – AND there’s that missing USD 8.5 TRILLION that the Pentagon can’t find. [The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion Accounting Black Hole, by Michael Rainey, January 23, 2020]
Meanwhile, according to the GUARDIAN, “in 2013, coal, oil and gas companies spent USD 670 billion searching for more fossil fuels, investments that could be worthless if action on global warming slashes allowed emissions.”
California plans a USD 100 billion high speed train to serve impatient commuters between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in 2014, Wall Street paid over USD 28 billion in bonuses to needy executives. If you include greedy sports team owners and players who, between 2000 and 2010, received 12 billion tax dollars to help pay for their arenas, the total could exceed USD 1 trillion.
With that money, we could easily build enough MSRs to end the burning of fossil fuels for generating electricity while drastically cutting carbon dioxide production.
According to WORLD NUCLEAR NEWS, Russia’s Rosatom Overseas intends to sell desalination facilities powered by nuclear power plants to its export markets: Dzhomart Aliyev, the head of Rosatom Overseas, says that the company sees ‘a significant potential in foreign markets,’ and is offering two LWRs producing 1200 MW each to Egypt’s Ministry of Electricity as part of a combined power and desalination plant.
“Desalination units can produce 170,000 cubic meters of potable water/day with 850 MWh of electricity per day. This would use only about 3% of the output of a 1200 MWe nuclear plant. In addition, two desalination units are also being considered for inclusion in Iran’s plan to expand the Bushehr power plant with Russian technology, and another agreement between Argentina and Russia also includes desalination with nuclear power.” Dzhomart Aliyev, chief executive officer of Rusatom Overseas.
In 2016, the Vice President of Rosatom reported that the company plans to build more than 90 plants in the pipeline worth some USD 110 Billion, with the aim of delivering 1000 GW by 2050.
“By 2030 we must build 28 nuclear power units. This is nearly the same as the number of units made or commissioned over the entire Soviet period… ROSATOM, the Russian nuclear power corporation and builders of the Kundamkulam nuclear power plant in India, has orders for building many nuclear power units abroad.” (XXII Nuclear Inter Jura 2016 Proceedings of the Congress)
Stratfor Global Intelligence reported in an October, 2015 article titled Russia: Exporting Influence, One Nuclear Reactor at a Timethat “Rosatom estimated that the value of orders has reached USD 300 billion, with 30 plants in 12 countries. From South Africa to Argentina to Vietnam to… Saudi Arabia, there appears to be no region where Russia does not seek to send its nuclear exports.”
However, our [USA] nuclear industry, opposed by Climate deniers like Donald J Trump, fervent “greens” and powerful carbon companies that put profit before planet, struggles to stay alive.
In Why Not Nuclear?Brian Kingdescribed our failure to build Generation IV nuclear plants that, unlike LWRs, take advantage of high-temperature coolants such as liquid metals or liquid salts that improve efficiency.
“Argonne National Laboratory held the major responsibility for developing nuclear power in the U.S. By 1980, there were two main goals: Develop a nuclear plant that can’t melt down, then build a reactor that can run on waste from nuclear power plants…
“In the early 80’s Argonne opened a site for an experimental breeder reactor in Idaho. About five years later [two weeks before Chernobyl], they were ready for a demonstration. Scientists from around the globe were invited to watch what would happen if there was a loss of coolant to the reactor, a condition similar to the event at Fukushima where the cores of three reactors overheated and melted.
“Dr. C. Till, the director of the Generation IV project, calmly watched the gauges on the panel as core temperature briefly increased, then rapidly dropped as the reactor shut down without any intervention!
“The Argonne Generation IV project was a success, but it couldn’t get past the anti-nuke politics of the 1990’s, so it was shut down by the Clinton administration because they said we didn’t need it.
“One can only imagine what the world would look like today, with a fleet of Generation IV nuclear plants that would run safely for centuries on all of the waste at storage sites around the globe. No heat-trapping carbon dioxide would have been created – only ever increasing amounts of clean, reliable power. So why not nuclear power?
“Unfortunately, most environmentalists oppose nuclear power, as do many liberals. The Democratic Party is afraid of anti-nuclear sentiment… like the Nation Magazine, the Sierra Club and others. Why are all these people against such a safe and promising source of energy?
“… nuclear power has been tarred with the same brush as nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants can’t explode like bombs, but people still think that way….
“There is also a matter of group prejudice, not unlike a fervently religious group or an audience at a sports event of great importance to local fans. People are afraid to go against the beliefs of their peers, no matter how unsubstantiated those beliefs may be.
”Finally, some good news: In July, 2018, Advanced Reactor Concepts (ARC) and Canada’s New Brunswick Power agreed to build a sodium-cooled, small modular reactor (SMR) – and thereafter at other sites worldwide.
“The ARC-100 includes a passive, “walk away-safe” design that ensures the reactor cannot melt down – even if the plant loses all electrical power. The ARC-100 can consume the nuclear waste produced by LWRs and operate for 20 years without refuelling. Ontario approves nuclear.
Under the agreement, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and Samsung Heavy Industries plan to develop molten salt reactors for marine propulsion and floating nuclear power plants, using molten fluoride salts as the primary coolant at low pressure.
The liquid fuel, besides being at 700-1000 degrees C, contains isotopes fatal to saboteurs.
Do not require water cooling, so hydrogen and steam explosions are eliminated.
Don’t need periodic refuelling shutdowns because the fuel is supplied as needed and the by-products are constantly removed. (LWRs are shut down every 2-3 years to replace about ¼ of the fuel rods, but, LFTRs can run much longer.)
Thorium 232 is far more abundant than U-235. Well suited to areas where water is scarce.
Do not need huge containment domes because they operate at atmospheric pressure. Breed their own fuel.
Can’t “melt down” because the fuel/coolant is already liquid, and the reactor can handle high temperatures.
Fluoride salts are less dangerous than the super-heated water used by conventional reactors, and they could replace the world’s coal-powered plants by 2050.
Are suitable for modular factory production, truck transport and on-site assembly.
Create the Plutonium-238 that powers NASA’s deep space exploration vehicles.
Are intrinsically safe: Overheating expands the fuel/salt, decreasing its density, which lowers the fission rate.
If there is a loss of electric power, the molten salt fuel quickly melts a freeze plug, automatically draining the fuel into a tank, where it cools and solidifies.
Highly efficient. At least 99% of a LFTR’s Thorium is consumed, compared to about 4% of the uranium in LWRs.
Are highly scalable – 10 megaWatt to 2,000 MW plants. A 200 MW LFTR could be transported on a few semi-trailer trucks.
Although our current LWRs are very safe and highly efficient, LFTRS are even more productive, and they cannot melt down.
Data from the Australian Nuclear Society and Technological Organization of the Australian government: + Thorium fuelled molten salt reactors have an energy return ratio of 2,000 to 1. [Also called Energy Density] + Our current LWRs that are fuelled with uranium have an energy return ratio of 75 to 1. + Coal and gas have an energy return ratio of about 30 to 1. Wind has an energy return ratio of 4 to 1. + Solar has an energy return ratio of 1.6 to 1.
“The increase in coal-fired power generation is thus mainly driven by low renewable generation, increased electricity demand and partly also by the high gas prices this year.”
Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
Taking the Easiest Course of Action
It would be very difficult to make a weapon from LFTR fuels because the gamma rays emitted by the U-232 in the fuel would harm technicians and damage the bomb’s electronics.
Uranium could be stolen during enriching, production of pellets, delivery to the reactor, and for long-term storage, but LFTRs only use external uranium to start the reaction, after which time uranium is produced within the reactor from thorium.
The United Kingdom tried unsuccessfully over a period of 10 years, from the 1950’s to the 1960’s, to produce a weapon from Thorium. They gave up and switched to the uranium path. Still today, 1.5 tonnes of Thorium remain stored from that program. This is enough to power the entire UK for 10 years – Carbon Free. The USA fired one Thorium driven test in 1955 (MET/Operation Teapot), but the results so poor and complications so high they did no further.
A 1 GW LWR [Light Water Reactor] requires about 1.2 tons of uranium per year, but a 1 GW LFTR only needs a one-time “kick-start” of 500 pounds [225 kg] of U-235 plus 1 ton of Thorium per year during its 60 year lifespan.
The half-life of Thorium 232 is 14 billion years, so it is not hazardous due to its extremely slow decay.
The primary physical advantage of Thorium fuel is that it uniquely makes possible a breeder reactor that runs with slow neutrons, otherwise known as a thermal breeder reactor. These reactors are often considered simpler than the more traditional fast-neutron breeders.
[When Thorium 232 takes up a neutron, the subsequent decay takes two paths: mostly U233 and some U232. The U233 provides most of the useful energy production by Fission. U232 provides protection against proliferation as several decay daughters are high energy gamma emitters – meaning they burn out silicon chips. For example the gamma spike coming from Thallium 208 is 2.6 MeV. ]
[Shielding using advanced materials and methods, such as distance (air), lead, and water can reduce radiation energy to levels where dosages are at recommended levels around 10 microSiverts per hour or 100 milliSiverts per year.
Note that there have been many examples of doses much higher than this causing no concern, such as 350 microSiverts per hour received by Albert Stevens for over 20 years.
Radiation shielding is a mass of absorbing material placed between yourself and the source of radiation in order to reduce the radiation to a level that is safer for humans.
This is measured by using a concept called the halving thickness – the thickness of a material required to halve the energy of the radiation passing through it.
Remember also, that Radiation decreases with distance in accordance with the inverse square law.]
Radiation Halving Thickness Chart
Material
100 keV
200 keV
500 keV
Air
3555 cm
4359 cm
6189 cm
Water
4.15 cm
5.1 cm
7.15 cm
Carbon
2.07 cm
2.53 cm
3.54 cm
Aluminium
1.59 cm
2.14 cm
3.05 cm
Iron
0.26 cm
0.64 cm
1.06 cm
Copper
0.18 cm
0.53 cm
0.95 cm
Lead
0.012 cm
0.068 cm
0.42 cm
Radiation Halving Thickness Chart
Quotes by Albert Einstein “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I never would have lifted a finger,” “I made one great mistake in my life-when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification-the danger that the Germans would make them.” “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking … the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.” – Albert said this in 1945, after the US bombed Japan with nuclear weapons and killed over 200,000 innocent civilians. Approximately 50,000 of them where children, 100,000 where women, and the balance the elderly. There were minor military casualties. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.” “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilisation should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
Albert Einstein, the Grandfather of Fission Energy
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) being interviewed by anthropologist and writer Ashley Montagu (1905-1999) in 1946. Einstein was born at Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. Encouraged by his father, who was an electrical engineer, Einstein studied at the Zurich PoAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinGerman born mathematical atomic physicist Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955). (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein
Energy production is the only viable way away from militarisation of Fission Energy. In the same way fire is harnessed in a fireplace to warm our homes or make our steels, Invisible Fire, Fission Energy, Energy from the Atom, does the same. We are blessed by people like Alvin Weinberg who dedicated their lives to the cause after witnessing how their scientific endeavours were employed with such militaristic zeal for death and destruction.
“Weinberg realised that you could use Thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. … his team built a working reactor … and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make Thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, defacto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.”
Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
How a LFTR works
In one type of LFTR, a liquid Thorium salt mixture circulates through the reactor core, releasing neutrons that convert Thorium 232 in an outer, shell-like “jacket” to Thorium 233. Thorium 232 cannot sustain a chain reaction, but it is fertile, meaning that it can be converted to fissile U-233 through neutron capture, also known as “breeding.”
Space LFTR by fmilluminatiNewcastle Molten Salt Burner
When a Uranium 233 atom absorbs a neutron, it fissions (splits), releasing huge amounts of energy and more neutrons that activate more Thorium 232. In summary, a LFTR turns Thorium-232 into U-233, which thoroughly fissions while producing only 10% as much “waste” as LWRs produce.
How Thorium “Burns”
“Thorium energy can help check CO2 and global warming, cut deadly air pollution, provide inexhaustible energy, and increase human prosperity. Our world is beset by global warming, pollution, resource conflicts, and energy poverty. Millions die from coal plant emissions. We war over mideast oil. Food supplies from sea and land are threatened. Developing nations’ growth exacerbates the crises. Few nations will adopt carbon taxes or energy policies against their economic self-interests to reduce global CO2 emissions. Energy cheaper than coal will dissuade all nations from burning coal. Innovative Thorium energy uses economic persuasion to end the pollution, to provide energy and prosperity to developing nations, and to create energy security for all people for all time.”
Why Thorium must be the Future of Energy, Robert Orr Jr.
Fascinating read with lots of calcs you can perform yourself, DGD
Thorium, what we should have done, B. Kirkpatrick
Fantastic book about this little known alternative nuclear energy source, ChicagoRichie
Should be in the hands of every science class and on top of every policy maker’s desk, R. Kame
A MUST HAVE resource on energy generation alternatives, George Whitehead
Get Free Energy, Abolish CO2, End Energy Dependency, Clean – Up the Planet and Make a Fortune. Kindle Customer
Essential education, Ames Gilbert
A solution for global climate change, Lawrence Baldwin
Wonderful book, written in text book style, Dot Dock
The place to go for Thorium info. Gerald M. Sutliff
Global warming killer, Red Avenger
Thorium reactors can be civilizations future for energy, Hill Country Bob
Thorium fuel in a breeder reactor implies limitless future energy, Fred W. Hallberg
On the ESSENTIAL BOOK LIST, James38
The half-life of Thorium 232, which constitutes most of the earth’s Thorium, is 14 billion years, so it is not hazardous due to its extremely slow decay. – Dr. George Erickson
“Given the diminished scale of LFTRs, it seems reasonable to project that reactors of 100 megawatts can be factory produced for a cost of around $200 million.”
Post created by Jeremiah Josey with the team at The Thorium Network
What’s a LFTR?
A thorium–fuelled MSR[Molten Salt Reactor] is a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor – a LFTR
Pronounced ‘LIFTER‘
A Lifetime of power in the palm of your hand [with Thorium]
With a half-life of 14 billion years, Thorium-232 is one of the safest, least radioactive elements in the world. Thorium-232 emits harmless alpha particles that cannot even penetrate skin, but when it becomes Th-233 in a Molten Salt Reactor, it becomes a potent source of power. Sunlight, living at high altitude and the emissions from your granite counter-top or a coal-burning plant are more hazardous than thorium-232.
LFTRs are even more fuel-efficient than uranium- fuelled MSRs, and they create little waste because a LFTR consumes close to 99% of the thorium-232. LWRs reactors consume just 3% of their uranium before the rods need to be changed. That’s like burning just a tiny part of a log while polluting the rest with chemicals you must store for years.
Just one pound of thorium can generate as much electricity as 1700 tons coal, so replacing coal-burning plants with LFTRs would eliminate one of the largest causes of climate change. That same pound (just a golf ball-size lump), can yield all the energy an individual will ever need, and just one cubic yard of thorium can power a small city for at least a year. In fact, if we were to replace ALL of our carbon-fuelled, electrical power production with LFTRs, we would eliminate 30 to 35% of all man-made greenhouse gas production.
From 1977 to 1982, the Light Water Reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania was powered with thorium, and when it was eventually shuttered, the reactor core was found to contain about 1% more fissile material (U233/235) than when it was loaded. (Thorium has also fuelled the Indian Point 1 facility and a German reactor.)
India, which has an abundance of thorium, is planning to build Thorium-powered reactors, as is China while we struggle to overcome our unwarranted fear of nuclear power. And in April, 2015, a European commission announced a project with 11 partners from science and industry to prove the innovative safety concepts of the Thorium-fuelled MSR and deliver a breakthrough in waste management.
Please read Thorium: the last great opportunity of the industrial age – by David Archibald
Thorium is four times as plentiful as uranium ore, which contains only 1% U-235. Besides being almost entirely usable, it is 400 times more abundant than uranium’s fissile U-235. Even at current use rates, uranium fuels can last for centuries, but thorium could power our world for thousands of years.
Just 1 ton of thorium is equivalent to 460 billion cubic meters of natural gas. We already have about 400,000 tons of thorium ore in “storage”, and we don’t need to mine thorium because our Rare-Earth Elements plant receives enough thorium to power the U. S. every year. Australia and India tie for the largest at about 500,000 tons, and China is well supplied.
A 1 GW LWR requires about 1.2 tons of uranium each year, but a 1 GW LFTR only needs a one-time “kick start” of 500 pounds of U-235 plus 1 ton of thorium each year.
Waste and Storage
Due to their high efficiency, LFTRs create only 1% of the waste that conventional reactors produce, and because only a small part of that waste needs storing for 400 years – not the thousands of years that LWR waste requires – repositories much smaller than Yucca mountain would easily suffice.
Furthermore, LFTRs can run almost forever because they produce enough neutrons to make their own fuel, and the toxicity from LFTR waste is 1/1000 that of LWR waste. So, the best way to eliminate most nuclear waste is to stop creating it with LWRs and replace them with reactors like MSRs or LFTRs that can utilize stored “waste” as fuel.
With no need for huge containment buildings, MSRs can be smaller in size and power than current reactors, so ships, factories, and cities could have their own power source, thus creating a more reliable, efficient power grid by cutting long transmission line losses that can run from 8 to 15%. Unfortunately, few elected officials will challenge the carbon industries that provide millions of jobs and wield great political power. As a consequence, thorium projects have received little to no help from our government, even though China and Canada are moving toward thorium, and India already has a reactor that runs on 20% thorium oxide.
After our DOE signed an agreement with China, we gave them our MSR data. To supply its needs while MSRs are being built, China is relying on 27 conventional nuclear reactors plus 29 Generation III+ (solid fuel) nuclear plants that are under construction. China also intends to build an additional fifty-seven nuclear power plants, which is estimated to add at least 150 GigaWatts (GW) by 2030.
“Global increase in nuclear power capacity in 2015 hit 10.2 gigawatts, the highest growth in 25 years driven by construction of new nuclear plants mainly in China…. We have never seen such an increase in nuclear capacity addition, mainly driven by China, South Korea and Russia,.. It shows that with the right policies, nuclear capacity can increase.”
Russia Building the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Turkey
“When the China National Nuclear Power Manufacturing Corporation sought investors in 2015, they expected to raise a modest number of millions but they raised more than $280 billion.”
In 2016, the Chinese Academy of Sciences allocated $1 billion to begin buildingLFTRs by 2020. As for Japan, which began to restart its reactors in 2015, a FUJI design for a 100 to 200 MW LFTR is being developed by a consortium from Japan, the U. S. and Russia at an estimated energy cost of just three cents/kWh. Furthermore, it appears that five years for construction and about $3 billion per reactor will be routine in China.
Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network
What’s an MSR? A Molten Salt Reactor of Course!
Molten Salt Reactors are superior in many ways to conventional reactors.
In a Molten Salt Reactor, the uranium (probably Thorium in the future), is dissolved in a liquid fluoride salt. (Although fluorine gas is corrosive, fluoride salts are not.) Fluoride salts also don’t break down under high temperatures or high radiation, and they lock up radioactive material, which prevents it from being released to the environment.
As noted earlier, Dr. Alvin Weinberg’s Oak Ridge MSR ran successfully for 22,000 hours during the sixties. However, the program was shelved, partly for political reasons and partly because we [USA] favoured Admiral Rickover’s water-cooled reactors.
Schematic of a Molten Salt Reactor
When uranium or thorium is combined with a liquid fluoride salt, there are no pellets, no zirconium tubes and no water, the source of the hydrogen that exploded at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The fluid that contains the uranium is also the heat-transfer agent, so no water is required for cooling. MSRs are also more efficient than LWR plants because the temperature of the molten salt is about 1300 F [700 C], whereas the temperature of the water in a conventional reactor is about 600 F [315 C], and higher heat creates more high-pressure steam to spin the turbines.
This extra heat can also be used to generate more electricity, desalinate seawater, split water for hydrogen fuel cells, make ammonia for fertilizer and even extract CO2 from the air and our oceans to make gasoline and diesel fuel. In addition, MSRs can be fueled with 96% of our stored uranium “waste” – spent fuel – and the fissile material in our thousands of nuclear bombs.
Because some MSR designs do not need to be water-cooled, those versions don’t risk a steam explosion that could propel radioactive isotopes into the environment. And because MSRs operate at atmospheric pressure, no huge, concrete containment dome is needed.
When the temperature of the liquid salt fuel rises as the chain reaction increases, the fuel expands, which decreases its density and slows the rate of fission, which prevents a “runaway” reaction. As a consequence, an MSR is inherently self-governing, and because the fuel is liquid, it can easily drain by gravity into a large containment reservoir. As a consequence, the results of a fuel “spill” from an MSR would be measured in square yards, not miles.
In the event of a power outage, a refrigerated salt plug at the bottom of the reactor automatically melts, allowing the fuel to drain into a tank, where it spreads out solidifies, stopping the reaction. In effect, MSRs are walk-away- safe.
Even if you abandon an MSR, the fuel will automatically drain and solidify without any assistance.
If the Fukushima reactor had been an MSR, there would have been no meltdown, and because radioactive by-products like caesium, iodine and strontium bind tightly to stable salts, they would not have been released into the environment. (In 2018 Jordan agreed to purchase two, 110 MW, South Korean molten salt reactors,)
May 2021 – Danish firm plans floating SMR for export South Korea firm to build floating nuclear plants. NuScale and Canadian firm to build floating MSRs. Saskatchewan Indigenous company to explore small MSRs. August 2021 – Wall Street Journal – Small Reactors, Big Future for Nuclear Power
Besides producing CO2-free electricity, fissioning U-233 in an MSR creates essential industrial elements that include xenon, which is used in lasers, neodymium for super-strength magnets, rhodium, strontium, medical molybdenum-99, zirconium, ruthenium, palladium, iodine-131 for the treatment of thyroid cancers and bismuth-213, which is used for targeted cancer treatments.
