Heh. Apparently, I must be destroyed for having an opinion. From Al Gore’s “Reality Drop” project, the GoreBots have been given the orders.
What’s all the hullabaloo about? An interview I gave with a website that covers energy issues.
I’m sure now the “Cooked up” conspiracy theory ideation that I’m in the employ of “Big Oil” will get even wilder. The fact is though, I’m not employed by “Big Oil” nor any energy company. I’m not employed by any NGO either.
Read the entire interview by James Stafford here to see what’s got them in a tizzy. One of the things I talk about in the interview is the need to move forward with energy, and surprise, it isn’t about oil. It is about Thorium powered reactors.
My observation on Thorium power from the interview last week is backed up today by the fact that the Chinese are moving forward on the taxpayer funded work we discarded in a big way, and was handed to them by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
From an article in the Telegraph:
The thorium blueprints gathered dust in the archives until retrieved and published by former Nasa engineer Kirk Sorensen. The US largely ignored him: China did not.
Mr Jiang visited the Oak Ridge labs and obtained the designs after reading an article in the American Scientist two years ago extolling thorium. His team concluded that a molten salt reactor — if done the right way — may answer China’s prayers.
See this NYT article from March 11th: In Search of Energy Miracles
Among the new nuclear approaches, fission reactors based on thorium are especially intriguing, offering potentially huge safety advantages. The basic concepts were proved in research by the American nuclear establishment in the 1960s, but the idea was ultimately abandoned by the Nixon administration in favor of a riskier approach called breeder reactors, which turned into an $8 billion black hole.
An engineer in Alabama, Kirk Sorensen, has helped excavate the old thorium work and founded his own tiny company, Flibe Energy, to push it forward. But it will surprise no one to hear that China is ahead of the United States on this, with hundreds of engineers working on thorium reactors.
“They’re doing laps around the track, and we haven’t even decided if we’re going to lace up our shoes,” Mr. Sorensen said.
Here’s a 5 minute video summing it up:
And, there is a petition you can sign if you agree.
US White House Petition
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
focus the bulk of American regulatory and technical prowess on developing a test Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. (LFTR)
At UCB in the early 70s the “guys down the hall” were working on thorium vs the fast breeder – what sold the latter and killed the former was that the breeder has the potential to clean-up nuclear waste, while thorium creates more of it. Not politics, not oil money: chemistry and nuclear
engineering.
In contrast, Battelle was working on what has since become “fracking” – and funding for that was later cut by Carter, apparently for political reasons.
Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?
Answer yes or no.
Anthony, you must be on target if the lunacy project is obsessing over you.
You are correct their disconnect is hilarious, hopefully this post will cause them to move to full auto fire, although I am not sure their feet will survive.
As for the nitwits who ask where your funding comes from, I am sure they conveniently missed the “Fling Funds” icon.
I dunno – seems to me all these alternative energy techs have their value and applications – in the sense that what we’re doing now seems to be less-than-elegant engineering and carry a host of ‘unexpected consequences’, ie waste/radioactivity issues, safety issues, distribution and power centralization issues (political), etc. However: –
I’m most intrigued by a different approach, sort of rather than wrestling with nature, go with the flow. Seems this tech is pretty close now (though dependant on private funding since it emerged that it was far superior even in theory to Tokamak fusion design) and was cut off by NASA-JPL, DOE, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in a tale that Prof Eric Lerner relates, that rivals the worst of scientific repression scientists ‘protecting their turf’, bureaucratic and political manipulation, open career threats, squelching peer-reviewed expermental data and a host of additional deeds-by-policy…that are the very heart of everything against which WUWT stands.
DPF – Dense Plasma Fusion is projected to run on Hydrogen-Boron fuel, so there’s also no issue of fuel supply for hundreds of thousands of years.
Seems the production line units should come in at about $300,000 each, power local neighbourhoods rather than whole cities and regions, cool down for monthly service in 9 hours, essentially zero radioactive waste (berillium anodes would have the signature of a classroom of kids – background rad. , basically), and weighing about 2 tons would easily fit in a spaceship to Mars in 4 weeks – Ion Drive, I guess is the term)
The afficionadoes and some gorgeous animations of the physics can be found at http://www.FocusFusion.org – they’re already nearly successfully at ignition temps but want 1 billion E-volts – a challenge is faster capacitor switches, but bear in mind they’ve got zero support from any level of government, save University funding – all privately driven.
[That’s understandable, as totally local, decentralized, direct to electricity (no steam heating, no pressure vessels, etc) energy is not something too attractive to Centralized Government, eh?]
For now, until I learn something new (I’m open to that, always), when I win the Lottery this is who will get my spec investment dollars.
Prof. Eric Lerner’s story, in his own words, can be found on YouTube, titled “Solstice Seminar 4/5 – This Q&A is like a juicy pomegranate” – just cut’n’paste if interested, about 15 minutes. Makes one want to scream: – We could have had Fusion energy 15 years ago.
Here’s a 90 second animation of the ignition sequence: –
Rolls Royce boffins seem to willing to have punt on LFTR.
http://lftrsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rolls-royce-to-develop-liquid-fluoride.html
Robert of Ottawa says:
March 12, 2013 at 1:36 pm
I believe, cannot remember where i read it, that the CanadianCandu reactor could handle a switch to Thorium cycles without too big a change.
You are correct, looks like we took a wrong turn at plutonium….
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/with-thorium-we-could-have-safe-nuclear-power/article625549/
OK, I can’t resist – I find these things so stunningly elegant and beautiful, so much in harmony with what I’m beginning ( I hope correctly) to perceive as the ‘nature of reality’ (at least on the ‘physical level’, rather than ‘spiritual’, if you will) that I just gotta share.
This is a high-speed camera look at the firing sequence – not an ‘animation’. Watch and enjoy, please! Titled (youtube) “Lassoed Lightning: Capturing the Focus Fusion-1 plasma on camera”
Eric Booth says:
March 12, 2013 at 2:03 pm
After the Sarah Palin debacle, regarding the “Bullseye” target affair ( http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-palins-crosshairs-ad-focus-gabrielle-giffords-debate/story?id=12576437 ), you’d think some bright Algorian would realize the seriousness of using a “crosshair targeting” symbolism with the vindictive instructions – “Destroy Denial (/Deniers)” attached.
Heaven help Gore if any skeptic gets hurt by one of his more zealous followers.
Eric…. That was my very first thought. Though I’m not a Palin fan by any means, I defended her against that silly attack. The Gorbots don’t even see the hypocrisy. The irony is lost on them.
Destroy denial – nice catchy slogan, but a bit inaccurate. How about:
Drown out debate?
Trash truth?
F*** free speech?
Candus can also use spent spent uranium and thorium as fuel if this is successful…
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF-Candu_expands_cooperation_with_China-0308124.html
As if that’s not enough, Yasuhiro Iwamura, of Mitsubishi, who gave a talk on low energy nuclear transmutation (so-called “cold fusion”), linked to here:
http://www.lenr-coldfusion.com/2012/12/09/yasuhiro-iwamura-ans-presentation-lenr-transmutation/
has reported that Toyota scientists have replicated their results. LENR research has yielded inconsistent results since Pons and Fleischman, so this should be very important.
I’D LIKE TO SEE ANTHONY REACH OUT A NON-CARBON, FUSION/THORIUM OLIVE BRANCH, IN A LOUD AND SUSTAINED FASHION, TO THE CO2 CATASTROPHIST CROWD, IN LARGE PART TO SEPARATE TRUE BELIEVERS FROM THOSE WHO ARE USING ‘SCIENCE’ TO PURSUE A POLITICAL AGENDA.
Also, as a matter of national pride (I’m an American), I don’t want to buy thorium reactors from China or India, that we could just as well develop and manufacture, here.
Hey Brad, why don’t you tell us where your income comes from and whether you have received funds from Rockefeller, Soros, Tides, or other NGO’s.
I can see through this charade. Kenji is secretly trying to destroy China’s economy. So he hides behind the world’s most viewed climate web-site and gets his obedient soldier Anthony to leak news of long lost Thorium reactor plans that would generate nearly “free” power. And these plans are available free to the Chinese who spend the next thirty years trying to get these useless things running, slowly ruining their economy in the meantime. All the while the Americans sneak back onto low cost coal and pull even further ahead. Cue the mad laugh…brilliant work Big Coal…
I’ve been following this topic for a while and recently discussed thorium cycle reactors with a friend who is a retired nuclear engineer. He said the basic idea is rock-solid but the tricky part is the engineering: the molten salt medium is incredibly corrosive and they could never find, or even imagine, an engineering solution (in his day). Engineering problems usually get solved though…….
Brad says:
March 12, 2013 at 11:05 am
Do you recieve money in any capacity from any oil company or NGO, directly or indirectly? Same for Koch Brothers interests….?
Reply. [Did you not “read” the first sentence of the thread? “I’m sure now the “Cooked up” conspiracy theory ideation that I’m in the employ of “Big Oil” will get even wilder. The fact is though, I’m not employed by “Big Oil” nor any energy company. I’m not employed by any NGO either.” Mod]
REPLY2: And that goes for Koch, as well as indirect funding as well. Some shared ad revenue with wordpress.com (where WUWT is hosted) along with the tip jar and some prints, calendar and mug sales are it. – Anthony
Well, then, do you receive any money from medium or light oil? What about baby oil? Has your wife ever used Oil of Olay? Do you have an oil can in your garage filled with oil!?! Do you refer to margarine as oleo?!!!
Thorium is fine, but instead of trying to use its energy (heat and/or electricity) to make diesel out of CO2 it would be much more efficient to just use coal as the source of carbon instead.
CO2 concentrations of 0.04%, and much of that bound oxygen, compared with coal at 100% carbon…
@Tiburon
“Seems this tech is pretty close now (though dependant on private funding since it emerged that it was far superior even in theory to Tokamak fusion design) and was cut off by NASA-JPL, DOE, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in a tale that Prof Eric Lerner relates, that rivals the worst of scientific repression scientists ‘protecting their turf’, ”
Can you supply details, and/or a link?
Another example of “protecting turf” was written about at physics.stackexchange.com, by Ron Maimon, the 2nd highest ranked commentator, there. At
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/43060/what-are-the-challenges-to-achieving-cold-fusion/
he said,
“The money was on the other side— the hot fusion folks were afraid of losing their funding, and said so. At MIT, they held a “death of cold fusion” party before the replication they were conducting was even run! In this video you have this fellow saying “Broadly speaking, it’s dead, and it will remain dead for a long, long time.” The notable part is the “long, long time”. What the heck is that supposed to mean? That all discredited ideas come back? This means “I know it’s real, but I’ll suppress it, because I am jealous of Martin’s immortality.” ”
In this thread:
http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-105871.html
I noted Bussard’s claims about Dept. of Energy would kil his polyhedral fusion reactor design. (His friends in the Navy told him to not even attempt to get DOE funding.)
Fame at last, Anthony. Who’d have thunk? Except for the bots and the trolls, we’re with you. Cheers. 🙂
zefal says:
..
Well, then, do you receive any money from medium or light oil? What about baby oil? Has your wife ever used Oil of Olay? Do you have an oil can in your garage filled with oil!?! Do you refer to margarine as oleo?!!!
——————–
🙂
We’re going to get to the bottom of this Watts. Have you ever used a coupon to lower the price of an oil change? Have you ever paid reduced admissions to enter a museum to examine oil paintings? Have you or any of your ancestors ever purchased an oil burning lamp at below market prices? Have you or anyone you’ve known ever had a problem with oily skin? Come on Watts, out with it!
Bloke down the pub says: “The only way the ecos would accept thorium power would be if you could convince them that it was made from concentrated sunbeams.”
That would be ridiculous. Crystals are made from concentrated sunbeams.
/s
This is timely…
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512321/safer-nuclear-power-at-half-the-price/
Hey Metamars,
Yes, I got a link – it’s a youtube clip I referenced in the comment. There’s a roundtable Q&A where a probing question to Prof Eric Lerner leads him to give a very short bio of the entire project, from it’s original backing by JPL (they were MOST interested in the Ion Drive potential, since you can’t put a Tokamak in a rocket ship (have you SEEN the size of the ITER in France?), plus of course totally Aneutronic, which cuts down on at least one aspect of risk in space exploration. I like the 4 weeks thing, pure acceleration out, then flip and brake, and you’re there!
Anyone, back on point, it’s only 15 min, and the question comes just a couple of minutes in – and Lerner starts from the beginning and brings it to now.
This man will perhaps be one of the great heroes of Science, as it was meant to be. He’s fought repression, villification and opprobrium for close to 3 decades. All the principles were in place 20 years ago, and today (through private financing, save University space/assistance) he’s likely less than 2 years from a prototype. ESPECIALLY if his work ‘catches a buzz’ and they can get sufficient research funding to ‘multi-task’ some of the peripheral challenges (faster engineered capacitor switches, the ion beam transformer – neither particularly insurmountable, just not done yet; they already have Patent on the x-ray absorbent shielding (thousands of layers of aluminum foil in the little chamber, basically – as I understand it, in turn directing the energy back into the cycle). They’ve also managed (I’m not pretending to understand this) to put a little ‘kick spin’ on the plasmoid, which boosts power output several fold. And they are ALREADY at ignition temperatures, apparently – but still things to tweak and study, the team folk are VERY methodical in their approach; no ‘shortcuts’ or hyperbole.
Here’s the Q&A you requested: –
@Tiburon
Could you provide what the fusion reaction is, i.e. the molecules being fused? Know the ratio of energy in to energy out (captured) at this stage of testing?
For those not familiar with how fusion works, it is the joining of two nuclei (the nucleus of an atom). It takes a tremendous amount of energy to accomplish this fusing, but the process releases a lot of energy in the form of alpha and/or beta particles, and electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma, x-ray and a bunch more of the spectrum. Depending on the nuclei being fused, neutrons may be released. We have lots of ways of capturing these types of energy and our present day nuclear reactors are a good example of how we capture this energy. The sun is a fusion reactor and look at how much energy we capture from the little tiny window of exposure we get.
Joe Public says: “Do you receive any government grants to carry out research?”
Anthony – REPLY: “Nope, never even applied for one”
Come on Anthony, we have all been told, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Thus, you must be hauling in those big-buck govy grants, forcing humble Hansen and maligned Mann to scrimp and scrape, their way through their toils…
/Massive Sarc
Anthony,
There is solace in watching them froth at the mouth and spew lies.. It means that they have lost and their last ditch effort to discredit you is here.. Be calm and watch the clowns flail all over.. The circus has come to town and the public knows where to go see fools…
I’m willing to make a friendly wager with Anthony (or anyone else for that matter) that LENR in the form of the device/technology developed by Andrea Rossi (the Nickel/Hydrogen LENR device) makes a commercial success of itself BEFORE the first ‘test’ output energy (I was going to say “Watt”) ever “hits the grid” from an LFTR reactor … shall we set 3 year time limit? Or 5 even, since Rossi has a head start on actually selling units, having received safety certification from EU authorities for industrial-use even.
The strong, wrong-headed refusal to EVEN look at test-results over the years in the LENR/LANR field is a *perfect* exemplification of the age-old operating premise of mankind: “new ideas take root not on their merit but rather as the old, entrenched guard die off” * … you’ve all had a front row seat on this site with regard to CAGW “climate science” folk who are unwilling to even acknowledge that skeptics have merit in their argument, merit in their data analysis, or any validity on the myriad of points used to challenge the propositions set forth by the well-funded (by governments), entrenched CAGW crowd.
If anyone thinks the world exists solely as you learned/were instructed (taught) in HS or college (just a few years back even), many, many are going to find out they were sorely mistaken.
.
* I might add: there is one other way, wherein some entrepreneur, with a vision so sharp and resolve so firm can by sheer force of will bring developed product to market … Can you say ‘Apple’? Never mind having to dot all the “i’s” or cross all the “t’s” and provide all the ‘required’ proofs demanded-of by an unconsulted peanut gallery concerned only with their own view, or ‘position’ on the laws of nature … the ultimate proof is in the operation of the device regardless of what contrary thoughts may be held in the cranium of mere mortal ‘man’ (literally: “mankind”). After all, one need not understand the complexities of fuel and oxidizer ‘combustion’ to make use of ‘fire’; better use of one’s time in that endeavor can be made in tinder selection and knowing what/how certain woods burn for the intended purpose.
.