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
Phillip Bradley
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.
India makes bombs, too. If that was a policy factor here, perhaps it is also a factor there.
I did a TV report on Thorium about six months ago. It is TV simplistic, but here is a link to the video on Youtube.
And, did you all notice that Anthony plugged Thorium in his PBS interview? That didn’t make the air, but was posted on the website.
In condemnation of the Fukushima plant disaster, some perspective needs to be applied.
Deaths due to direct tsunami effects: Approximately 19,000
Buildings destroyed: 1.2 million
Economic damage: $574,000,000,000 (that’s Billion)
366 days later review:
http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/10/japan-366-days-after-the-quake-19000-lives-lost-1-2-million-buildings-damaged-574-billion/
Deaths due to Fukushima reactor failures: 0
“Predicted” deaths due to radiation leakage (excess cancers): 130
Actual percentage of deaths caused by reactor failure: 0.000%
Predicted percentage of deaths caused by reactor failure: 0.68%
This from a “worst case” extrapolation review,
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee22019a
Which is criticized by another study by MIT, which stated “It is interesting that, despite the evacuation of roughly 100,000 residents, the Japanese government was criticized for not imposing evacuations for even more people. From our studies, we would predict that the population that was left behind would not show excess DNA damage — this is something we can test using technologies recently developed in our laboratory,”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/prolonged-radiation-exposure-0515.html
India is going to use Thorium fuel in a big way in another 25 years. The type of Reactor, LFTR or normal LMFBR or APWR, it will take some time for the final decision to be evolved. But for sure Thorium is the only bet for India.
Quite a few of the comments here seem to be by folks who haven’t informed themselves of the history of Thorium back in the 1950s and 1960s. The science was developed fully back then. With limited funding, only one small reactor was able to be built, and it proved the concept and that engineering it all out was possible. With the science proven out and the engineering for that small reactor successful, all that needs to be done now is to engineer up somewhat of a replication of that earlier one, then step that up if it proves itself out.
It needs to be said: This is an engineering problem; the science is proven. People arguing the science or pointing out this or that difficulty are obviously people who have never designed and built any equipment of any kind. Difficulties arise in any project, especially in new or relatively untried technologies. This technology isn’t new, technically speaking (no pun intended), since it was done before. But since everyone from that era is now dead, it certainly is new to those who might be tasked with driving it forward and producing results. There will certainly be a learning curve. But it is an engineering learning curve, not a scientific one. That is a HUGE difference. As an engineering problem it is only a matter of taking the ball and running with it and seeing what problems DO arise, and then solving them.
The money needs to be allotted to make this happen. Here in the USA. The Chinese are willing to take the ball and run with it. THAT ALONE should be a huge clue that we’d better get off our butts and get going. Yes, we could jump in later, because it would still behoove us to do so, even then, because of all our stored Thorium – but if all the patents go to the Chinese, we would be sucking hind teat for a VERY long time. But we would get cheap energy, either way. It’s just that we would be at the mercy of the Chinese if we don’t get in the ballgame NOW. All it takes is money and will. And stop being stupid and stop listening to people yammering and just take a flyer on getting it to work. It IS only an engineering problem.
Steve Garcia
Excellent post by Steve Garcia. Most of the people seem to have no idea of what is all about Nuclear Reactors. Nuclear energy is a relatively high tech area. Common people must accept it and leave it to the experts. No one debates a Heart surgery or Liver transplant like this. Just they read something written in the common media about nuclear energy and think that whatever written there is gospel ! These people do not want to listen to the experts, because it is a bit too complex to understand. This is the reality throughout the world.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19785689
This may also help by making electricity production more efficient.
I wonder if the Yanks have any elderly nuclear submarines which they would like to sell cheaply?
We would need a very scaled down model.You would need the nuclear power unit, and a cable taking the power to shore. You would also need rapid info on whether you needed more power or less power and the ability to switch the power source on and off rapidly. A nuclear sub has that already – otherwise it would have blown up already.
You need enough of a motor to take it some miles offshore to sink it in the mud.
You don’t need a weapons system, because you sub will not be deploying weapons.
Since you’re not shooting at anything you don’t need a sophisticated GPS system to find you a target.
You don’t have a problem disposing of nuclear waste – it just sits where it is!
The American Scientist article: http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/2010Hargraves2.pdf
Bruce of Newcastle says:
October 2, 2012 at 5:32 pm
LFTRs will operate at up to 700 C, not 1,100 C as in an aluminium smelter. Also the salt is a carrier fluid not a working fluid. No chemical reactions involved.
Of all people here who say that Thorium reactors operate at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, can someone enlighten me on how the hell are they willing to extract any energy from a reactor working in such mode?
Even current nuclear reactors could be operated at room temperatures and atmospheric pressures, there would be no problem with that. We intentionally build them to work at elevated temperatures and high pressures because there’s a steam turbine waiting for the steam and pressure generated by that heat to give us electricity, the whole reactor would be pointless without it.
And I seriously doubt it will be any different with Thorium reactors. If they make it to energy production, there still will be heat, steam, and high pressures involved. There still will be risk of explosions caused by the pressure and risk of radioactive contamination. Some – and some of the more dangerous – risks of current nuclear reactors can be eliminated and that’s a good thing. But it will never be as completely safe as some people are trying to suggest.
Unlike in other Reactors where water is the Heat Transport medium, in LFTR it is Molten Salt operating at high temperatures which works as the heat transfer medium. Due to very low Vapour pressure of Molten salts, it is possible to maintain high temperature at near atmospheric pressures.
This is as simple as that. We need not call Heaven or hell to achieve this !
Certainly, further development should be undertaken. It would be far better value than making more copies of renewables that have proven to be unable to respond to load demands.
Calling LFTR the future energy source is premature until a working full scale production unit has been demonstrated and tested.
Willis Eschenbach says:
October 2, 2012 at 5:43 pm
I went to my spreadsheet and it has data from 1835. On the spreadsheet is a link to the data source, which is the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. CDIAC is the nuclear industry’s contribution to the campaign against coal. They needn’t bother because coal will become too valuable for power generation soon enough. I try the link again and the data starts from 1895. So it seems that the forces of darkness have decided that pre-1895 temperature data is powerful juju that the public should no longer have access to. So this is an appeal for long term, uncorrupted US temperature data.
Pamela Gray says:
October 2, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Discussion of science can be distressing, can’t it Ms Gray. Avert your eyes then. It gets worse. In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, I was accused of using biblical language:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fact-is-abbott-must-be-watchful-of-joness-distorted-views-20121002-26xaj.html#ixzz28BA4ZmGM
Paul Westhaver says:
October 2, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Hydrogen is not a product of fission but of the reaction from the zirconium fuel rods with steam. Zirconium is necessary because it is neutron-transparent. In LWRs, there is a very narrow operating window between the operating temperature of 300 C and the oxidation temperature of perhaps 500 C. The problem is decay heat. Areva’s solution was to make their EPR model a giant heat sink with hydrogen scrubbers on the walls. They know it is going to melt down, they are just trying to limit the size of the explosion.
Kasuha – LFTR does not use pressurized water as reactor coolant, instead it uses molten salt (FLiBe), which stays atmospheric pressure at LFTR operating temperature (600-900 degrees proposed). The het from the salt is extracted into closed cycle Brayton turbine which uses a gas (like CO2) as the working fluid.
There is no water anywhere.
Don K says:
October 2, 2012 at 7:13 pm
While theoretically possible to build a bomb using U233, the U232 in it makes it very difficult in practice. Nobody would bother when it is much easier to make ones from plutonium. Amongst other things, a 6 kg slug of U233 will give off 1,000 watts of heat. You don’t want that in your bomb.
Fagan (not Fagin) uses SI units in his books, with the more familiar (to older readers) equivalents in brackets. I haven’t noticed his arrow head errors, but he seems to be unaware that the US ton (2000 lbs?) is not the same as the UK ton (2240 lbs). So he needlessly converts metric tonnes (1000 kg) when in reality both the uK ton and the metric tonnes are almost exectly equal.
Without more evidence I wouldn’t be so dismissive of Fagan: he’s only guilty of some pretty minor errors..
Reblogged this on Standard Climate.
David Archibald says:
October 3, 2012 at 12:03 am
Pamela Gray says:
October 2, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Discussion of science can be distressing, can’t it Ms Gray. Avert your eyes then. It gets worse. In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, I was accused of using biblical language:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fact-is-abbott-must-be-watchful-of-joness-distorted-views-20121002-26xaj.html#ixzz28BA4ZmGM
Good thing I clicked the link instead of averting my eyes. Here is what the SMH says:
“In another recent interview he [the radio shock jock Alan Jones] repeated as ”fact” his contention the world has not been warming, and then interviewed David Archibald of the Institute of World Politics (he is also listed as an ”expert” by the climate-sceptic US think tank the Heartland Institute and a director of the Australian sceptic group the Lavoisier Group).
Jones quoted approvingly Archibald’s biblical sounding prose in which he maintains the carbon tax proves we are ruled by ”evil men and evil women” and fulminates that ”whoever of you breathed a word in favour of the carbon tax will bear the guilt of those broken lives and broken marriages to your graves, your sin was not a love of nature but a loathing of your fellow man”.
”Do some people in Canberra actually hate us?” Jones inquired. ”They do,” Archibald replied, calling on voters to ”unleash their righteous anger” upon those who begat the tax.”
That sounds like biblical language to me. I can’t imagine anyone discussing science with that kind of language.
David Archibald says:
October 2, 2012 at 11:18 pm
LFTRs will operate at up to 700 C, not 1,100 C as in an aluminium smelter.
David, my experience has been with hydroxide at 400 C and chloride systems at a variety of temperature (aqueous and molten). Molten NaOH and KOH are quite benign in theory but I’ve seen what can go wrong when the materials people don’t know what they are doing. Even simple aqueous chloride processes have a litany of failures that would fill whole books. Here you have radioactivity stressing the materials as well as the extreme halide corrosivity. This is not trivial and I think represents a serious risk of process development failure. Unfortunately also the risk is in the later stages of the development cycle, which are the most expensive to pilot.
If, as mentioned above, designs like CANDU can already use thorium I would recommend going in that direction first. Get the runs on the board.
I am a fan of thorium and I do work with it and uranium extractively from time to time. I would hate to see a promising option get Fukushima’ed for materials and corrosion reasons.
M. King Hubbert was one the two founders of Technocracy in the 20ies. What did they suggest to solve energy needs? Why, the panacea of the day, hydropower for everything.
Fast forward to the 50ies. What does M. King Hubbert suggest to fix all problems? Why, the panacea of the day, nuclear power.
If Hubbert would be politically active today, he would suggest the panacea of the day. Wind turbines and solar panels.
He was just a cookie-cutter Malthusian activist.
Bruce of Newcastle said…
‘The Maunder was cold, but not that cold. Other than that I fully agree with David’s temperature expectation.’
I also agree (no matter what Archy said to Jones) the situation confronting us is potentially serious, but I imagine few here see it the same way.
It has taken almost 20 years to simply redesign the existing BWRs and PWRs to passive operation, which they now are. It has taken that long to obtain the licences to construct same from the NRC. Despite the innumberable boobs, Green wackos, tort litigious fools, NIMBYs and dedicated Luddites and assorted other demagogues, political morons, and goofballs were doing their very best to impede and obstruct.
Since nothing but experimental molten salt reactors have been contructed, how long do you think it will be to design from scratch, and license a very corosive Molten Salt reactor? Thirty years? Forty years? Who will undertake to spend prodigious sums for half a century before their is any possible payback?. Certainly no one except a government.
I don’t see any governments willing to buck the obvious pwerful lobby of these fools; nevermind to spend money like water for half a century. Even if they did 50 years from now, the same demagogues will still try to “monkey wrench” any projects.
Hell, the goofballs and wackos are objecting to the USA spending a piddly sum like $2 Billion diollars over two decades to provide a truly infinite energy supply like Fusion, on the last Fusion experiment, the ITER. They killed it once before, delaying Fusion by a decade and a half, so they would have more money for their pet windmills and solar projects. . Meanwhile they combine to spend $257 billion to install 3% of the worlds generation capacity when the other 97% cost only 302 billion. .
Fusion reactors by the way, can be much better as convertors of fission radioactive fuel with out any consequences, thenLFRs as they can simply place them in their shielding and neutralize them by Actinide Burning them into safer isotopes.
By the time the LFSR can be built Fusion alternatives will be available.
I fully agree with Mr. Stas Peterson, excepting that, we are not yet confident of fusion energy to take over in the next few decades. The main impediment being the right material which can have super conductivity at or near room temperature.
Till then we need to rely on Fission based Nuclear energy.
Under Fission, Thorium cycle with LFTR concept offers certain advantages which we shall utilize.
Well, the regulatory aspects are purely non-technical and they really do not add any value. Definitely they need to be bulldozed for the betterment of the world population at large. It is unfortunate that in the name of bringing in independence in the Regulatory framework, more and more Non-Nuclear people are brought in the Regulatory Boards. It is happening across the globe. It is going to make the matter still worse. Many technical people would not have forgotten the Three Mile Island communication fiasco caused by some NRC Members.
Regarding Fusion research, yes, it is unfortunate that USA is not doing its best, unlike in other frontier technologies.
Maybe top stuff. 20 years from 2012.
I’d test it for 20 years as 2% of UK demand before basing a total energy strategy on it though.