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)
I flat-out do not understand why we have ignored throium. Good for China for realizing an opportunity.
Hey Leg
OK, again, I’ll emphasize I’m a total tyro in all this – really zero hard sciences background scholastically ( I CAN, I guess, hold my own in discussion of politics, sociology and comparative religion, but…so what!) – Here’s what I know and for the real skinny I’d direct you to the The Focus Fusion Society at http://www.focusfusion.org , where some very hardworking volunteers have put together some clear explanations of the processi for the layman.
Apparently, when one ‘cracks’ (fuses then ‘they explode’) certain isotopes of hydrogen, like deuterium and tritium, one gets a pretty dangerous emission of neutrons which as I understand can then irradiate other things and ‘turn them radioactive’. If that makes any sense, but don’t quote me.
What the Fo-Fu folks are doing is working with pB11, proton Boron and hydrogen (it would be as a gas in the ignition chamber, which even now could theoretically fit on a two-ton truck) it, to quote from a nice blurb with pictures on the site: – “When a boron-11 nucleus fuses with a hydrogen nucleus – the result is three helium nuclei (aka “alpha particles”) and energy, but no radioactive waste.”
Actually, if the chamber was destroyed catastrophically, like if an ion powered plane crashed, the wreckage WOULD be radioactive, for about 20 minutes. Other than that though, the beryllium electrodes (the anode(?)) would have to be replaced only once a month, a servicing/maintenance procedure, 9 hours to cool down and then the Cable Guy could do it.
The beryllium would be recycled for use again, the issue is due to very high temperatures (as at about 100 Million degrees C they’ll wear out pretty quick). There’s a few other issues too, like getting rid of the waste heat. However, as Lerner points out in one of this discussions, as their ‘ideal’ initial production model would be about 5 megawat (about 1000 homes, a neighbourhood), it could almost be simply vented to atmosphere, but in larger arrays (like aluminum production where one might have 20 units running) one would likely require the same capital cost for cooling as in conventional power plants – ie water cooling with it’s attendant challenges, environmental mostly. They want to solve those issues somehow, more elegantly – it’s more engineering than anything else though, not a physics puzzle.
The small size of individual power units is great, for energy security, and less need for transmission infrastructure, just distribution lines, relatively cheap.
In space it’s another question, because as he explains, cooling can only take place by radiation in ‘vacuum’, but there’s some interesting thoughts ‘afoot’ in that area too – like having a controlled curtain of ‘particle-sized’ water coming down the side of the spacecraft, and being recovered – which would give you the necessary radiative surface…
Anywaze, Aneutronic Fusion processes, compared with the conventional neutronic fusion processes, nice simple (for which I’m grateful) diagrams, can be found here: –
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C63
Enjoy!
@ur momisugly Leg
oh, regards ‘efficiency’, apparently it looks like about 40% but that’s without the cooling issues, if I understand. Some of that is of course ‘well-understood physics’ – they have the necessary temps but haven’t yet moved to pB11 in testing, but are using deuterium for now, initially, to solve many other related questions as prelude.
They’re working with the private firm Lawrenceville Plasma Physics and this is timeline description of the the LPPX (Experiment) process and discussion: –
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C30
Prof Lerner is, btw, fully supportive of all advances in the Fusion field, and articulates the importance of advancing many models in order to ‘do the science’ and arrive at the best. It’s just that it’s appearing his team is way out in front, and accelerating (if it’s not cut down by the PTB, that is)
Leg says March 12, 2013 at 6:10 pm
…
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. …
(The above is an exemplification of what I was high-lighting or pointing out in my previous post , no offense to Leg. <grin>)
Leg, can I challenge you to ‘repeat’ the above after having viewed just the first three videos of the on-line 101 IAP course by Dr. Peterhagelstein of MIT as linked below? willing to bet here (on my part) that this is new information e.g. the loading of a Palladium crystal lattice with D, the repeated appearance of elements thought only possible via ‘fusion’ processes, yet little to no alpha, beta, gamma, x-rays …
1 Cold Fusion 101 Dr. Peter Hagelstein at MIT 01/22/2013 (Day 1 Part 1)
2 Cold Fusion 101 Dr. Peter Hagelstein at MIT 01/22/2013 (Day 1 Part 2)
3 Cold Fusion 101 Dr. Peter Hagelstein at MIT 01/22/2013 (Day 1 Part 3)
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Important; correction to last comment – the FocusFusion folks are NOT using deuterium! for their testing now (I don’t think! – ) Reminds me to keep my mouth shut when I get out of my depth, which I try to do. Here’s a short video of one of their recent (2010) ‘shots’ where I think they mention what they’re using, some sort of non-flammable gas? There’s been some talk of using another boron based gas, decaborane or octaborane before going to pB11 but in any case for more info pls follow the links to the papers and status today…
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70e5UGnd-P0
Anthony, at least you’re not funded by Big Green…
@Tiburon Thanks very much. Will take a look, later on this week.
I’ve met Eric, and we chatted about last summer. At the time, what he described to me as their #1 challenge sounded like a problem in materials science, not physics.
I’ve also met Alvin Marks, who held (and probably still holds) the record for total number of patents. (Well, I guess he couldn’t beat out Edison, so maybe he had the most of any living inventor, while he was alive.) He died with something like 120 patents to his name.
He spent a good chunk of his later years trying to develop solar technology, which was supposed to get 80% efficiency, not the piddling 20+% they’re still getting, after all these years. From speaking to his ex-wife, a Mrs. Aitken who was still involved with Marks’ endeavors, they WERE opposed by an evil oil man. Armand Hammer.
Marks’ brother’s chauffer was killed, a plant they had was burned to the ground, Mr. Aitken was beaten to a pulp in Europe, and died within, I think, a couple of years. Hammer seemed to known more about some of these events than he ‘should’ have, and seemed a little amused, when Mrs. Aitken spoke with him at a party thrown by the Kennedys. (Yes, those Kennedys).
Although I don’t think there’s any connection between Al Gore’s CO2 fixation and Armand Hammer, IIRC, the Gore family fortune came from Hammer’s oil dealings. I find Gore, McKibben, Hansen, et. al,, curiously uninterested or unaware of fusion, thorium reactors, and even the suppression of geniuses like Alvin Marks who could have made solar energy much more practical.
I hope Eric gets the support he deserves. To frustrate a genius like Alvin Marks was a crime.
triple correction. they DO use deuterium, for now. pB11 later. I’ll now shut up and let physics majors take over, ‘K?
“Tiburon says: March 12, 2013 at 3:26 pm OK, I can’t resist –”
You sound like someone I could go for a coffee with and talk for hours to about energy. There is just so much out there these days that seems so close. The FocusFusion, Dr Brussard’s work, Z-Machine and so many other fusion developments are just so cool to read and think about.
Even if LFTR doesn’t work out or gets leap frogged technologically it is still way better than our current reactors. I’m curious about the liquid fluoride confinement. It is very corrosive but they did run a test reactor in the 1960s for 5 years (no electricity, just measurements). What did they use to confine it for 5 years?
” _Jim says: March 12, 2013 at 6:50 pm
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 ”
I wouldn’t bet against it but I don’t think Rossi has the best understanding of what is going on. Nor do I think he will be first to market. There are several competing theories that I’ve tracked over the years. Dr Mills “hydrino” theory (blacklightpower.com), Mark L. LeClair’s “cavitation” (nanospireinc.com), Robert E. Godes “Quantum Fusion” (brillouinenergy.com) and some others.
Brillouin have way smoother heat output than Rossi for instance. The big heat spikes you see in Rossi’s (or other CF) are not there. Instead they can turn up and down the heat in a very controlled fashion.
I personally lean towards the “cavitation” explanation from NanoSpire because it doesn’t require any lower electron orbits (blacklightpower). Perhaps it is just that their explanation of what they think is going on is easier for me to understand. I like you don’t have a science degree but love reading up on these things. Fun times.
Aside from George Miley, who is showing off hardware? Rossi has shown results, at least to his customers, and since his work is done with his own funding we (the public, the peanut gallery) don’t count for squat …
Citing a prev post of mine here on this thread: ” one need not understand the complexities of fuel and oxidizer ‘combustion’ to make use of ‘fire’ “.
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@ur momisugly metamars.
Wow, what a horrible tale – but unfortunately very believable. The older I get the more I seem to get wind of how deep the ‘rabbit hole’ goes with the graft, corruption and double-dealing. I’ve had projects and proposals ( incl. confidential biz plans) stolen from my group by government funding groups and given to cronies, and shady characters chase (and beat me up, though mildly) over other projects (natural food products, of all things!) – so I’ve learned to be a little more guarded in regards who and how I talk about stuff, personally.
It’s unfortunate, I guess, because however naive I’ve always operated under the assumption that everyone is ‘inherently good’, and that good ideas should be shared far and wide for them to grow and blossom. Doesn’t always work that way, and the devil remains in the details on all levels.
I’ve a solar thing I’ve been working with some folks on for two decades now, which still I believe carries merit, {unbelievably}. Stupid simple, home heating and electricity production, off-the-shelf technology and physics that go back to the Romans and that even I can understand. Waiting still for that ‘magic’ dynamic of a team/finance to do a working prototype, maybe in greenhouse model, maybe residential home model, but the initial calculations seem to show full ‘off-grid’ operation, solar source only, heat, light, pumps, the works, up to about 55 degrees latitude winters w/zero supplemental, reversible in desert heat conditions. I think no one has done it because only control systems could be deemed proprietory/patentable, and it’s affordable for dirt poor farmers and the lower middle-class.
We shall see. Have a good night, and good ‘chatting’ with you.
TRM – Thx for good words and fascinating links!
Come on Anthony. We know that you own several mansions which you have built by the coast which you claim is about to flood and which have massive heated swimming pools. We know that you fly around on private jets giving off that toxic poison CO2.
Oh, wait a minute, I don’t think that was you after all. Now who is it that lives that way? Can anybody guess? You know, it’s that chap with no vested interests who also owns massive stakes in Carbon Trading Exchanges.
“…The fact is though, I’m not employed by “Big Oil” nor any energy company. I’m not employed by any NGO either…”
And never got arrested for trespassing in front of the White house, never admitted to wire fraud, never knowingly used upside-down data in a peer reviewed paper, never had a career as a cartoonist or author, never failed in a bid for President; just think, if all they’ve “got” on you is a supposed tie to big oil, then they’ve got to try harder.
A century ago Standard Oil, the company of John D. Rockafeller, was broken up after being accused of ripping off customers where they had a monopoly, and unfairly destroying competitors with secret agreements discriminating against them.
Today we have shrill NGO’s and environmental lobby-groups who have decided that the faults lie with the customers for wanting and needing to buy it, and with the oil itself, not just ‘Big oil’, but small and medium oil too.
The logic escapes me.
My understanding is that funding to develop molten-salt reactors (MSR) based on the thorium cycle would be forthcoming from private venture capitalists if the NRC (Nuclear
ReductionRegulatory Commission) and government did not impose such huge penalties for reactors. Almost regardless of reactor size, the licence to build and operate costs millions every year.The strength of the thorium MSR is that its optimum size is “small”; in the hundreds of megawatts (~[200;500] MW), making it commercially viable to diffuse the supply grid from a small number of very large plants, to one of more medium-sized plants placed closer to the consumers of the energy; reducing grid costs and transmission losses. The size is also similar to that of “boilers” in conventional power plants, allowing MSR to progressively replace coal/oil/gas in existing plants.
But if current policies, via the NRC and other channels, imposes disadvantage, commercial backing will be lacking, even with subsidies from government. Taxpayer-funded subsidies which offset penalties imposed for political purposes.
It is better for the people to instruct their government to do less than to ask the government to do more.
Some of us old retired folks have a few bucks in large index stock funds. Thus, we get regular checks from big oil, little oil, large coal, tall soft drink makers, and makers of curly fries, and . . .
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@ur momisugly davidxn, Peter, & Doug
“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.”
[Andrew Johnson]
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@ur momisuglyjorgekafkazar says:
March 12, 2013 at 5:38 pm
“That would be ridiculous. Crystals are made from concentrated sunbeams.”
Those would be Dilithium crystals in a starship’s warp drive?
Brad, tut, tut. You seem to be new to the BIG OIL / fossil fuel funding argument. Let me assist you to get up to speed. Here are just a few references to get you going.
See:
here (Climate scientists try to get big oil funding in leaked emails)
here (CRU received funding from BP & Shell)
here (Pachauri set up residual crude oil extraction company)
here (Stanford climate research pledged $100 million from Exxon)
here (Green group Sierra Club took $26 million from gas industry)
here (Al Gore pocketed $100,000,000 from BIG OIL backed Al Jazeera)
Further reading:
Big Oil Money for Me, But Not for Thee
compare & contrast funding
There seems to be a lot of people here who have difficulties separating fluorides and fluorine. Fluorides are moderately corrosive and slightly toxic salts. Fluorine is an extremely corrosive and toxic gas. Molten fluorides have been handled on an industrial scale for a long time, without any particular problems.
Ordinary table salt (natrium chloride) vs. chlorine is a analogous case.
Many respondents here talk of fusion. Don’t! It’s vapourware.
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LFTR’s are not a scientific problem. They are merely a re-engineering one.
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The only reason they dropped the better nuclear system with a plentiful energy resource which scales down quite nicely was for a single political reason: Thorium reactors cannot produce the bomb. So basically the politics behind nuclear going the wrong way was based on death and murder and resulted in huge taxation and engineering issues. Just like this globull warming scandal.
Others here have spoken against the LFTR’s remaining residuals which simply does not exist on the scale of the latest dry reactors. The notion that the latter “just burn about everything up” is pure propaganda because LFTR’s run a higher temperature and a lower pressure. LFTR’s do that and well.
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Lastly, the LFTR is the only truly high power, viable lightweight power option for long distance, deep space travel for humans and certainly the only truly viable option for a moon base which will be in darkness two weeks of the month.
A fFar more effective way to use thorium is to reactivate the PACER programm. It will cost about 3 billion US$. A short explanation of the PACER-Programm: You make hole in salt-dome 1 km under the surface with a diameter of 200 m. Fill the hole with water-vapor of 200 bar and 500 °C. Igniting a fusion-bomb of liquid deuterium with 20 kt and a mantle of thorium. You have to do this 5 times a day. You can harness the energy of the explosion and the U233 is bred without the built up of U232 with its high Gamma – activity of its daughter -products.
I am sold on LFTRs. Safe, and current nuclear waste can be used to initialize them. Industry hates them because monies made from fuel rod replacement is not there, no fuel rods and cheap plentiful fuel, relative to PWRs etc.
For those debating the Thorium reatcors see here:
http://www.thoriumpowercanada.com/technology/the-projects/
Interesting link I think…
Our planned 10 MW thorium reactor located in Copiapó, Chile consists of a core and reactor manufactured by DBI Operating Company in California. The balance of plant, including all buildings and required infrastructure will be constructed on site.
It is estimated that the TPC Thorium Reactor will provide enough power to produce 20 million litres per day at the desalination plant. This is the equivalent amount that would power 3500 homes.
An application for condition approval to build a demonstration reactor has been submitted to the Chilean Government.
Again, the usual progressive double-thinkspeak about funding. Who gives a flying frack about private funding, oil or otherwise? That’s between those two parties. PUBLIC funding is what the public is concerned about.