Guest post by David Archibald
Robert Hargraves lives in Hanover, New Hampshire. Mr Hargraves believes that “Global warming is harming us all.” Using the temperature – solar cycle length relationship from Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, for cycles 24 and 25, this is what Nature has in store for Hanover, New Hampshire:
So the coming years will be a severe test of his faith in the State-sponsored belief system.
In the meantime, he has done the World a good service by writing a book which describes why Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) are the solution to maintaining a high standard of living when the fossil fuels run out.
He starts the book by describing the basic physics of energy and then goes on to rehash IPCC material on global warming. Sometimes authors let slip, by their pronouncements, that they don’t have a good grip on the physical world. One of the better examples of that in Mr Hargraves’ case is this passage, ”Changes to life in the ocean will also be dire. Ocean life thrives in cold water; Caribbean water is blue and clear because it has less life than temperate and polar oceans.” Brian Fagin is another warmer author who betrays a lack of understanding of the physical world; in a number of his books he has describes arrow heads as weighing 1 kg. At any rate, on reading this sort of thing, the reader is alerted to not take any statement as being necessarily true.
The useful part of the book begins on page 115 with a discussion of the costs of existing energy sources – coal-fired power at 5.6 cents/kWh using coal at $45 per tonne and natural gas-based power at 4.8 cents/kWh using natural gas at $5/MBTU. Wind is far more expensive at 18.4 cents/kWh. Using pumped hydro storage to pacify it for the grid would add at least another 6 cents/kWh. Solar power is much the same cost at 23.5 cents/kWh.
Discussion of nuclear power begins in Chapter 5 on page 176. LFTRs will operate by having neutrons from the reactor core irradiate thorium in a blanket, converting it to fissile U233. That U233 is periodically rinsed from the blanket salt and fed to the core. Power from LFTRs is expected to cost of the order of 3 cents per kWh all up. The LFTRs will need a starter fuel at the rate of 1 kg per MW. The best source of that is the more than 72,000 tonnes of spent fuel rods that has accumulated in the US. That contains at least 648 tonnes of plutonium which is enough to start more than 3,000 200 MW reactors. Those spent fuel rods that have accumulated over the decades are a precious resource.
There is an interesting section on China’s LFTR project starting on page 260. China’s interest was triggered by an article in July 2010 in American Scientist. A delegation visited Oak Ridge National Laboratories where molten salt reactor work was done in the mid-1960s. The Chinese LFTR project was announced at a meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in January 2011. Oak Ridge had 1,894 Chinese visitors in 2011! The project currently employs 432 people, expected to rise to 750 in 2015. A working 2 MW (t) reactor is expected by 2017 and a 10 MW (e) by 2020. The Chinese reaction to that July 2010 article reminds me of John Boyd’s OODA loop. There was a mere six months between reading an article and committing to a major new thrust in nuclear research. The contrast between that and the billions spent in the West on recreating medieval fear and superstition, and calling it climate science, could not be more stark.
This book is also comprehensive. A section on synthetic liquid fuels and how they might be made using nuclear power starts on page 355. It is realised that sources of carbon might become so scarce that the cheapest source might be carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere. A scheme to do that is illustrated on page 361. This is ironic in a book that asserts that carbon dioxide is the scourge of Mankind.
King Hubbert, of peak oil fame, realised that Mankind’s fossil fuel use would only be a blip in time and that the future, of necessity, will be nuclear-powered. This is Figure 30 from his 1956 paper “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels”:
Mr Hargraves’ book has updated that insight and added flesh to the bones of the idea. His book is a useful addition to the comity. He is also to be lauded for self-publishing it. My edition is simply marked “Made in the USA; Lexington, KY; 09 September 2012”. The book’s website is: www.thoriumenergycheaperthancoal.com It can be purchased from Amazon.
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Below is a video describing the concept. Long, but informative – Anthony
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A lot of people know little of LFTR reactor designs. Here are a few advantages they could hold as I understand:
● No fuel rods. No control rods to jam of have no electricity to lower them. None. They are self-regulating by simple thermal expansion/contraction as power loads vary.
● The core operates at room pressure. No twelve inch thick steel trying to hold back the unbelievable pressure of super-heated steam within the core itself. High pressure steam may still be used on the generator side, could be gas, but the cores environment and the generating environment are completely separated by heat exchanges.
● If the core somehow were to leak out, like a cracked core, it will just turn to a glass-like salt. The criticality can only exist within the core itself. It is self quenching.
● If the core overheats, a plug of cooled salt at the bottom overheats, melts, and the entire core is dumped into catch containers by gravity. The Oak Ridge implementation did this every weekend, let it overheat, the plug melted, core dumped, the crew would spend the weekend at home. Monday, heat the the salt back to liquid state, pump back into the core and the core was restarted. Get that, weekly.
● Operating temperatures can be designed for much higher temperatures which boosts the generation efficiencies from about today’s 33% to nearly 50%, limited by available high temperature materials for the coatings of course.
● Continuous fuel replenishment. Shutdowns for refueling is unnecessary.
● They burn nearly all of the fuel put in, like 99%. Probably this is the greatest advantage, little waste left to store. If the thorium cycle can be perfected the waste has a very short half-life. Useable compounds can begin being extracted from the waste for medicine and space exploration within about ten years.
Now why would ANYONE not want us to see if this dream for mankind, or part of this dream, could be fulfilled? I can’t imagine, unless it being restrained by pure greed for other reasons.
Temperature records starting in 1835 in Hanover? Robert, does he say where he got them? The earliest records I can find for Hanover go back only to 1895 …
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FWIW, Hanover, NH = Dartmouth College. I sort of vaguely think there are temperature records from there well back into the 19th century, but I have no idea where one looks for them.
India (rich in Thorium, but without uranium) is starting development of a small reactor (300 MW)
but it won’t be operational until 2020. China is also developing a Thorium reactor, in this case a molten salt version. As far as I can tell, a Generation 4 (fast reactor) can do everything a Thorium reactor can do, and fast reactors are here – they also consume nuclear wastes (there’s enough energy in our nuclear wastes to provide all the electricity this country will use for the next 1000 years), rendering the wastes low radioactive material, And a fast reactor is intrinsically safe as well. .Nor are we likely to ever run out of nuclear fuel for our conventional reactors : although not yet cost competitive, the technology exists that can extract uranium from seawater and there is a hell of a lot of seawater. Better still, last week a mobile plant shipped from Australia demonstrated the ability to extract almost all of the uranium from a phosphate stream at a fertilizer plant, leaving the stream otherwise unaffected. The cost is fully competitive with mining – about 20 to 30 dollars per pound. The output was shipped to a processing plant for our nuclear fleet.
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear power became cheaper than coal in 1999
and currently is about 30% cheaper, around 3 cents and a fraction per kWhr. Uranium fuel cost component is around 6/10th of a cent per kilowatthour. These costs may be overstated, since
disposal of nuclear wastes will undoubtedly be less that what is being collected – those nuclear costs cited include nuclear wastes disposal and decommissioning costs, I believe.
Thorium reactors can operate at normal atmospheric pressure and therefore there is no danger of a containment explosion.
It has never been the nuclear fuel of choice with the political class because you can’t build bombs from it.
Another plus is that thorium reactors will consume the worlds build up of uranium waste and has none of its own.
Paul Westhaver says: October 2, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Fukashima was a 1 in 1000 year event where there was 1 in 1000 year earth quake, a 1 in a 1000 year Tsunami and a total failure of the grid to boot. The answer is to increase the safety systems, NOT PUT THE SPENT FUEL IN THE ATTIC like GE did and move on with better systems. France is 80% nuclear.
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I think the 3 big lessons learned from Fukushima are:
1. Don’t put the diesel generators in the basement where they might get flooded.
2. Don’t let the hydrogen collect where it can explode.
3. Don’t evacuate people and scare them by telling them they might get cancer from a miniscule amount of extra radiation. Many places around the world have higher natural background radiation than outside the fence at Fukushima. http://www.radiation-hormesis.com/
GlynnMhor says:
October 2, 2012 at 5:40 pm
The thorium cycle (actually U233 is the active fissile product) can be utilized by existing CANDU reactors without major design changes.
GlynnMhor, During my extensive training in the nuclear industry, I recall one of the physicists describing how much of the “U235 waste” may be reprocessed to be used in a Thorium reaction. I don’t recall the cascade but I do recall the assertion, as you state, that the conversion would be relatively easy in a CANDU.
Not sure if this blog post is about predicted temp swings based on solar cycles or sources of energy. Could you clear that up Mr. Archibald? Did you just use a bait and switch? If so, should we talk about the bait or the switch?
First, Hubberts “peak oil” is more Carbon control nonsense. Earth produces Hydrocarbons on a continious basis, likely less than current usage, but not finite in the near future. See “Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste” on this aboigenic reality. Next, the US operated a Thorium reactor at Indian Point, NY starting in Sept 1962. With a half-life of 14 billion years it is stable and the by-products are not nearly as dangerous as Uranium….BUT….the head of the NRC at the time was ADMIRAL Hyman Rickover. The decission to end Thorium research was based mainly on using the electricity rate payer to subsidize the nuke weapons industry. In the words of Ben Buchwalter:
“Before it was born, Thorium was killed by the sins of Uranium.”
Cycles 24 and 35?????
I do not understand why the US is not ALL OVER thorium reactors by now….
Dan in California,
Absolutely. The Japanese engineers did design for a Tsunami. The seawall that surrounded the plant was just not tall enough. If they are to put anything below ground it should be the spent fuel and the core. In a worst case scenario, let gravity flood the spent fuel and core with any water. The CANDU core cooling system incorporates a cooling pond that, should an earthquake occur, or the plant gets hit by a missile, gravity would flood the core and the spent fuel.
The hydrogen is a problem of dynamics. It is a by-product of fission and will collect in high points if flow is stagnant. There are in-line hydrogen reactors to reduce the amount of H2 gas but you need power…or venting.
India has had Thorium research reactors for 30 years and has yet to build a commercial reactor, despite building (and planned) 20 conventional nuclear reactors. Which tells me significant issues still remain.
Good grief! Look at that graph, no wonder the catastrophists wanted the science `settled` so quickly. Just a few short years and the whole edifice will crumble into sea…or possibly land on the beach if sea levels fall.
And of course YAY THORIUM!
The Sorensen piece above is must viewing for those who know nothing about Thorium.
It is ubiquitous. Reaction products have much shorter half-life. Reaction products and fuel cannot be weaponized. No catastrophic meltdown, fuel is already liquid. Loss of power just shuts down reaction.
We should have been doing this in the 50s, but they needed the plutonium cycle for weapons. Westinghouse wins.
What a terrible post. Since the first days of Internet comment sections, damn near every thread that touches on nuclear power ends up with at least one thorium or ‘nuclear pebbles’ comment. I can only assume that these people re-read old copies of Popular Science over and over. Did you know you can get 100 mpg with water as fuel? When A. Watts associates with this stuff, he just makes himself look bad. If this was a freshman writing assignment I’d hand it back for a rewrite before I”d even bother grading it.
REPLY: Well, thanks for expressing how much you hate it, but the post stays whether you like it or not. China is jumping on LFTR reactor development, but obviously you know far more than they do. – Anthony
Sidebar – scrapped reactor glass is a favorite of hobby gem cutters. It has a high lead content and has refractive indices approaching that of diamonds. It is usually yellow, easy to cut, and makes a real sparkler. Just cut it wet as one of the precautions with the high lead content.
Peter Laux says:
October 2, 2012 at 6:13 pm
It has never been the nuclear fuel of choice with the political class because you can’t build bombs from it.
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I believe that it is perfectly possible to convert Thorium to fissionable U233, isolate the Uranium, and build a U233 bomb. In fact, I think India has actually tested a small (0.2 KT) U233 bomb. But you’re correct, The technologies to build U235 and Plutonium bombs don’t require a lot of additional R&D for countries that already have them in place.
Okay so my thoughts on the US Navy reactors was not so good. But is my notion that boiling water reactors like GE made and the Japanese used at Fukashima are at best crufty to SCRAM and as with the tsunami impossible to SCRAM essentially true.
I say – look at the prospect of buying stocks in Nickel-mining operations … the reason should become very apparent soon …
Oh, and look to prepare to short-sell your carbon/hydro-carbon stocks or rather what it takes to prepare for quantity hydrogen production.
/cryptic
.
Thorium LFTR explained in the first 5 minutes:
SCRAM – Safety Control Rod Ax Man. Don’t fall asleep on the JOB 🙂
As I delve into this my understanding is that the US Navy reactor designs are pressurized water reactors. My point was that PWRs are a proven technology: the US Navy reactors, two generations of French reactors, the European Pressurized Reactor. There is considerable experience designing, building, and operating PWRs. The Thorium reactor is an interesting experiment, but it is still experimental.
MarkB says:
October 2, 2012 at 6:54 pm
What a terrible post. Since the first days of Internet comment sections, damn near every thread that touches on nuclear power ends up with at least one thorium or ‘nuclear pebbles’ comment. I can only assume that these people re-read old copies of Popular Science over and over. Did you know you can get 100 mpg with water as fuel? When A. Watts associates with this stuff, he just makes himself look bad. If this was a freshman writing assignment I’d hand it back for a rewrite before I”d even bother grading it.
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So what would you suggest Anthony put up as a post that would make him look good in your eyes? Anything?
If the US would invest $500,000,000 into researching this and it came to nothing, would we lose anymore than we lost on Solyndra?
Paul Martin says:
October 2, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Liquid Flouride? Fluoride, surely? Though many a flour mill has gone up like a bomb due to a dust explosion.
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I think the world’s leading expert on liquid flouride is named Betty Crocker.
I tried to follow her directions once and, yes, my efforts bombed.
Soyulent Green,
Back in the day AECL settled on the CANDU heavy water U235 system because it was believed that it produced no nasties, even in the heavy water D2O moderator fluid. After a few years of operation, and after many a soul waded chest deep in moderator fluid, it was found to contain T2O which is tritiated water. Titrated water is radioactive and has a half-life of 12.5 years.
It is further nastified because water is assumed into the human body and then the radioactive hydrogen are right there, mixing it up with your DNA…for the rest or your days.
Further still, tritium is the main supplement ingredient to the H-Bomb which an A-bomb packed with extra tritium to make a bigger bang.
Canada, in it’s effort to make a super safe reactor, accidentally made a breeder of Tritium. They never saw it coming. So who knows what will born in the womb of a Thorium reactor.