hmmm, what am I thinking of?

The biggest one probably being driving heavy industry from their state. Check out Rep. Chuck DeVore’s podcast–it’s fantastic on this subject.

Driving industry out of your state is not the way to improve your economy.

Because I understand the reasons and they’re not valid now; indeed they weren’t valid before.

At the risk of being rude, why are you guys wasting time with techniques for fighting global warming that are like shaking the branches of a tree rather than getting out the chain saw and cutting it down?

I’ve got about two dozen nuclear engineers on my forum looking at thorium and the LFTR. The worst any of them can say about it is that it upsets the standard nuclear apple cart (something that you all will probably like). Would you like to come over and point out where we’ve all got it wrong?

I wondered the same thing you did (whether or not this was a 200 mpg carburator). I’ve spent six years in graduate school in nuclear engineering (goes slow with a family) trying to figure it out and I’m almost certain this is a concept that can work.

Some pigfarmer put up enough panels to earn $60,000 a year.

That would be almost instant. People will move quickly to act to earn or save money.

I mean, why must demand grow any faster than population? According to this study, the Human Development Index (longevity, per capita income, and education) maxes out at 4,000kWh per person - rises after that don’t affect it. The Swedes with 25,000kWh per person are not any better off materially or socially than the Germans with 8,000kWh/person. Though both are better off than the Indians with under 1,000kWh/person.

The other stuff should be used as a replacement for current fossil fuel plants, not in addition to them. That’s the problem with both renewables and nuclear - people don’t turn the fossil fuels off when they get them. I mean, the US is the biggest nuclear generating country in the world and the biggest oil user; France has 80% of its electricity from nuclear but still uses as much oil per person as the Danes with 20% from wind, the Spanish are still happily burning zillion of gallons of oil, and so on.

So what’s needed is to say, “no more fossil fuel-burning generation” and to replace it as it craps out with renewables. Otherwise you’ll just get these renewable plants built, and have the old coal-burning plants chugging away. It’s like how Sweden voted in the 1980s to get rid of their nuclear power, so they added in more renewables to replace it, but found they enjoyed having all this extra energy to waste, so… they’ve not shut down their nukes.

You need a definite commitment to shut down X plant by Y date, preferably have sold the site and equipment to someone else for some other use so you can’t back out of it.

That would be almost instant. People will move quickly to act to earn or save money.

And I get accused of the 200 mpg carburetor…

Susan, somebody has to pay for all these things. That someone is the government who gets the money from you.

If it was liquid fluorine, we would indeed be in trouble, because liquid fluorine is just about the most reactive stuff on the planet. But as you’ll recall from 8th grade physical science, elements bind into compounds so they can fill their outer electron shell (the valence shell). Fluorine just needs one more electron to fill its outer shell, that’s why it’s so reactive when it doesn’t have it. When it DOES have that electron, it becomes a negatively-charged ion and is called fluorIDE instead of fluorINE.

So long as that negatively-charged fluoride ion hangs out with positively charged ions, it’s totally happy and doesn’t want to react with anything. That’s the secret to making a liquid-fluoride reactor–mix together two kinds of chemicals, one that has one electron it wants to get rid of, and one (fluorine) that’s dying to get that electron.

No problem, you use the stuff on the left-hand side of the periodic table, the alkali metals and the alkaline earth metals, and you get a whole bunch of really stable SALTS like lithium fluoride, beryllium fluoride, sodium fluoride, calcium fluoride. Odds are you brushed your teeth with some sodium fluoride this morning. Flip over your toothpaste and find out.

Salts are especially good in a nuclear reactor because the intense radiation coming off from fission and nuclear decay will blast apart any normally-bound matter (covalently-bonded). That’s why when we put covalently-bonded materials like uranium oxide (UO2) or uranium nitride (UN) they suffer lattice displacements from radiation damage and swelling. That limits how long they can be in the reactor, which in turn is one of the big reasons we can’t use nuclear fuel efficiently in this form, “burning” only a few percent of the energy that’s there.

But with the ionically-bonded salts, radiation is no problem. They get batted about like the balls in the playpen at McDonald’s and they don’t care. Their physical properties are absolutely IMPERVIOUS to the radiation. And that’s why I think salts are the natural form of nuclear fuel…the one that makes the most sense.

But what kind of salts? Fluoride salts, chloride salts? This is where the nuclear properties come into play. If the nucleus of fluorine was a big absorber of neutrons, none of this would work. But, as if it was a gift from nature, fluorine has very little tendency to absorb neutrons. The same can’t be said for many of the cations we want to bond to it (like sodium, potassium, etc.) Here we have to be more choosy. Fortunately, both lithium-7 (about 90% of natural lithium) and beryllium turn out to be exceptionally good cations, with extremely low tendencies to absorb neutrons and excellent physical properties (heat capacity, melting temp, etc.)

Thus, in lithium fluoride/beryllium fluoride (LiF-BeF2) we have a substance that is extremely chemically stable (won’t react with air and water), impervious to radiation damage, and is nearly “transparent” to the neutrons in the reactor core. So we use LiF-BeF2 (sometimes called FLiBe) as the basic medium in which to dissolve the uranium fluoride (UF4) and thorium fluoride (ThF4) that will sustain the nuclear reaction in the LFTR.

I think we’d agree that governments subsidize various energy technologies to some degree. In my opinion, I’m happy to see some of those subsidies go to homeowners and businesses in the form of solar panel rebates.

It returns money directly to ratepayers, is distributed, clean, boosts local jobs and all that good stuff. And, to Joe’s point, it’s just a few months from application to operation. Let’s say your right about Thorium: factor in political and public attitudes, what is a realistic timeframe?

For subsidies, in CT, $13 out of every $100 of our electric bill goes to Federally Mandated Congestion Charges. From that kitty, almost a billion may be going to new natural gas plants (@800Mw) plus their transmission lines. So we pay for the plants, wait 6-7 years (this includes time to collect the charges) and then we’ll pay rising costs for the electricity. For the life of the plant.

Our Clean Energy Fund gets about 50 cents of that $100. Our rebate program is for 50% of a grid interconnected PV system. Ratepayers chip in (almost nothing), homeowners who can front the costs see their bills (and emissions) plummet. For the life of the system.

I’m learning about Thorium from your posts, I just don’t see it delivering comparable benefits in 2008 or anytime soon, and timely intervention is the benchmark here.

BTW - On efficiency, we installed $25 worth of CFL’s and used a clothesline and indoor racks more. Our electricity usage dropped 20%.

2) I recommend a talk I heard by Nobel Physicist Burton Richter: Gambling With the Future about climate & energy.

It actually has a reasoned discussion of nuclear energy and where it might fit, which (unlike “Nuclear energy is THE answer, NOTHING else is worth doing” mantra, endlessly repeated by some people (not just Kirk S), which is incredibly counterproductive to any rational consideration of nuclear’s role., even by those inclined to do so.

I visited a reactor in high school, and for most of undergraduate years was planning a career in nuclear (or fusion) physics, and am perfectly open to reasoned arguments, but I get so turned off by the mantra I just don’t bother reading it any more.

Burton says efficiency is #1.

Admittedly, given CA state laws about disposal, I don’t expect to see any new nuclear plants here in my lifetime, and for various reasons, even if the laws change, no one is *ever* going to build a plant anywhere near where I live.

Development limited by technical issues only: I would estimate an operational reactor in five years and a gigawatt-class reactor within 10.

More realistic: 10 years to disseminate knowledge of this capability and to build political desire and momentum. Another 10 years to get to gigawatt-class production.

I’m 33, I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me and I know we’re going to need this. That’s why I’m here trying to tell you guys about it so hopefully we can shrink those 10 years to something shorter.

Coal and global warming aren’t going away so each day we need to move closer to this capability. That’s why I started my blog and forum.

Somebody has to pay for these things? And your point is? Don’t we have to pay for all these things? And if your talking gov. subsidies, nukes and fossil fuels get more than RE or EE.

Oh, and once you build “these things” the fuel is free, so you don’t have to worry about fuel prices skyrocketing.

Seems like a good deal to me.

As for your serious thorium fixation, I’m personally suspiscious of anything that purports to be a single shot silver bullet. We need everything, and we need efficiency now.

Regardless of what no-carbon energy sources we go to, we need to do all the efficiency we can — otherwise we’re just building expensive excess capacity.

Actually the money comes via your electricity supplier directly from the consumer in a FIT, paid for by very slightly higher energy bills for everyone. All the government does is legislate the rate at which you are paid and for how long.

FITs are the single most effective and cost effective incentives out there and they have been demonstrated time and time again to massively boost uptake of microgen (which will be an absolutely critical source of electricity in the future) as well as large scale renewables.

The poor old nuclear industry can’t get its grubby mitts on it though so it’s not surprising you’re so casually dismissive of it.

Yes, it’s clear from my writings that I’m nothing more than a shill for the standard nuclear industry, isn’t it?

Sheesh…

Your input is valuable and I urge you not to abandon your effort to educate policy makers and us.

You are putting out information to a community that has little knowledge and less interest in nuclear power. That community of anti-nuclear activists will not change their beliefs (in large part fixed by TMI) but international interest and investment in expanding safe nuclear, i.e. pebble bed reactors is where the action will be.

It is clear from your writing you are a student of the physics of nuclear energy and your generation will benefit from your knowledge and persistence.

A question: is thorium being tested as a pebble-bed fuel? If so, where and by whom?

John McCormick

All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t dismiss something as useful as the FIT out of hand as you did.

The nuclear industry has had plenty of support over the decades and doesn’t deserve any more. If it can’t stand up on its own two feet now, its time has come to an end.

You’d have to look long and hard to find where I dismissed the FIT “out-of-hand” because it didn’t happen.

John McCormick

I’m a big fan of efficient utilization of thorium, and that’s something that’s pretty easy to do in a liquid-fluoride reactor, but a lot harder to do in a pebble-bed reactor. The pebble-bed reactor, like other solid-fueled reactors, has a fuel form that can only tolerate so much radiation damage before it has to be removed. For the pebbles, this radiation damage level is typically much higher than oxide fuel, for instance, but it’s not unlimited (like fluoride fuel).

To use thorium in pebble-bed reactors, you need to manufacture the pebbles with both the thorium, the fissile material (enriched uranium, plutonium, or uranium-233), and the graphite moderator all bound together. To insure that this is going to work, you need to “qualify” the fuel, and the only way to do that accurately is to essentially build a test reactor and pound the snot out of the fuel for years. This is the “long lead item” in the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor the DOE wants to build in Idaho, and it will be the long-lead item for a pebble-bed thorium reactor as well.

After your fuel has reached the burnup limit, there’s still going to be a lot of valuable thorium, bred uranium-233, and other stuff in the pebble. That’s where you need to think about reprocessing, and reprocessing normal solid oxide fuel is hard, reprocessing thorium oxide fuel is REALLY hard, and reprocessing the pebbles is nigh unto impossible. The reason is is because they’re SO chemically stable in their pebble form that it’s hard to chemically react them with something that would be even MORE stable. (this is actually the basic problem with any solid fuel reprocessing)

Not to toot the fluoride reactor horn too much, but this is another advantage to fluoride fuel. It’s incredibly chemically stable, even more so than oxide fuel, but you don’t have to change its chemical composition to process the fuel–you can process it just as it is. That’s a trick you just can’t do with solid oxide or carbide fuel.

So a pebble-bed thorium reactor is certainly possible, and indeed has been done in Germany, but it will require a rather extensive and lengthy fuel qualification process, and the utilization of thorium and fissile material in such a reactor will be somewhat better than today’s solid core reactors, but not the 300 to 1 fuel utilization improvement you would see with a LFTR.

I’ve gotta take issue with your comment that CSP is “better than baseload”. How much energy will a CSP plant deliver at 4:00 AM? How about after a week of cloudy weather? CSP is better at covering peak demand than baseload. Baseload can deliver energy 24×7x52 stopping only for scheduled maintenance. Try that with CSP.

It’s not a matter of better or worse. They’re different.

First off, we have lots and lots of sources of power that deliver at 4 am. whereas demand then is incredibly low — and that’s why the price is so damn cheap. In any case, if you are really worried about nighttime power, then you should want wind is spread around the country.

Second, one doesn’t really see a week of cloudy weather in the desert. But again, the point is to spread the CSP over vastly different places in the Southwest, so you never have that problem — just as wind power facilities hundreds of miles away from each other do not have a high correlation in power output.

Third, one needs the most 4 a.m. electricity in the summer (when air-conditioning is kept on overnight). A mere 8 hours of storage would allow even CSP to deliver power then — although I can’t really imagine why you would want to throw away valuable “peak and shoulder” power to save it for worthless nighttime energy.

Fourth, the power that is most needed is from sunrise to a few hours after sunset. Your baseload plants don’t help you at all with that most precious of all power. Our overabundance of baseload is precisely why nighttime power is so damn cheap.

So I say, keep nuclear at 20%. Keep our hydro. Bring on 20%+ wind and other renewables. Give CSP as much storage as is cost-effective. And then Start phasing out traditional coal, and, if it is feasible, bring in CCS.

I can’t imagine that strategy would cause any 4 a.m. problems this century.

http://www.reuters.com/ article/ environmentNews/ idUSL0573285820080508

http://www.reuters.com/ article/ environmentNews/ idUSN0850981420080509

Ultimately we all pay one way or another for energy policy

After several years of experimental study, a commercial plant was installed on the Sleipner platform in time for the start of production in 1996. Two MEA absorber columns were installed that reduce the CO2 content of the gas to 2.25%. Four compressors – standard items of equipment on most oil and gas platforms – are then used to pressurize the nearly pure excess carbon dioxide to 80 × 105 Pa, before it is injected into the base of the Utsira aquifer 1 km below. The high pressure is significant because carbon dioxide has a “critical point” at a temperature of 31 °C and a pressure of 74 × 105 Pa, beyond which it exists in a “supercritical fluid” state with a density of about 700 kg m–3. Since injecting CO2 will raise the pressure in the aquifer, the CO2 remains in this fluid state.

So if Norway has been doing it, why can’t China, etc? Yes, fine, it will raise the price of energy, but surely we can deal with that more easily that we will have to deal with the effects of extreme weather, desertification, drought, etc., and surely we can–assuming govts are being at least somewhat farsighted and responsible– gradually squeeze the price of carbon upward to make it OK. In any case, we need CCs because all these coal plants aren’t going to be decommissioned any tme soon.

After I posted my comment yesterday, I saw this update on the Sleipner field:
http://www.reuters.com/ article/ environmentNews/ idUSL2915061620080429
They are now going to try to use the field to store CO2 from more sources, undoubtedly charging something for the service. But the real point is that the reason it is feasible to do in the first place was a law that was charging them for carbon emissions. Surely in light the destruction that we now know CO2 causes, making oil companies–and of course their customers, us–pay either for storage or a fine is as reasonable as it will be unpopular among the “free marketeer no-or-low-taxers” among us, who in reality want to be free riders on future generations (and that-far-in-the-future generations at that).