LFTRs are unique Thermal-Breeder Reactors, with unrivalled Safety, Low-cost, Eco-friendliness and Speed of Deployment.
Who says LFTRs can cure all of humankind's worst problems in just 2 or 3 decades?
Safety: LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure, with both reactor and coolant salts of low chemical reactivity; there is no high pressure or chemically reactive ‘driver’ to expel radiotoxic substances into the environment. A reactor vessel leak or breach would result in the molten salt glug-glug-glugging down the side of the vessel into non-critically configured drain tanks, designed to remove decay heat. Should core overheating occur, say, if the generators break down, laws of physics and thermodynamics will reduce reactivity and melt the freeze-plug to take reactor salts to the drain tanks under the action of Gravity (which never switches off). If all electrics are lost, as happened at Fukushima, cooling of the freeze-plug ceases and again, the core salts move to the drain tanks. LFTRs – Inherently and Passively Safe.
Cost: You can run by a LFTR and know it will be a fraction of the price of an equivalent PWR – atmospheric-pressure reactor plant (no 60 feet long steel pressure vessel, with 8 inches thick walls) – no containment dome – no widespread exclusion zone – no fuel enrichment plant – no fuel reprocessing plant – one thirtieth of the fuel, for the same electrical output as a PWR – only one-thousandth of the ore needs to be mined, for the equivalent energy output of uranium -- thorium ore, as an unwanted by-product of rare earth mineral mining, being given away – 3½ times more thorium than uranium in the Earth’s crust and oceans – economically available thorium will last for hundreds of thousands of years.
Waste: LFTRs generate one thirtieth of the waste of PWRs and the worst of it decays to background radiation levels in only 300 years (not 300,000 years), so it is easily, safely and cheaply stored. Equally as important is that LFTRs can burn up the existing long-lived nuclear waste as start-up fuel, to provide the neutron flux to commence the breeding of thorium-232 to uranium-233. The need for long term storage will disappear.
Speed of deployment: Half a dozen companies in the UK could manufacture LFTRs, because the equipment is such (relatively) simple, low-pressure, hot salt chemical plant and experience of manufacture of such plant and the use of Hastelloy materials exist. The first-of-a-kind LFTR could be operating in 5 years and, say, 100 MWe modular units could be rolling off production lines in 10 years. Such units would be affordable by developing countries and regions and the market would be for tens of thousands, which offers the opportunity of manufacturing jobs, growth and prosperity we have not seen in the UK for 3 generations.
Finally, an extremely important quality LFTRs have over PWRs, is their delivery of high quality process heat at temperatures up and above the 800 °C level where hydrogen production can take place, to kick-start a hydrogen economy. This facilitates production of carbon-neutral liquid fuels, from atmospheric CO2, and the production of carbon-neutral ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, as feedstock for nitrate fertilisers, to maintain agricultural production. Also, the waste heat from electricity generation is still at a high enough temperature for desalination or for combined heating and power installations.
LFTRS are thermal breeder reactors, a unique combination, which makes them uniquely effective in solving the UK’s energy needs and carbon commitments. Because thorium is a sustainable resource, which will last tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, LFTRs can deliver long-term hope of better standards of living and a healthier planet, for generations to come.
Who says LFTRs can cure all of humankind's worst problems in just 2 or 3 decades?
Alvin Weinberg - Thats who!
In at the birth of nuclear science and engineering, he invented and held the patents for the Light Water Reactor (LWR) - the ones that power our nuclear submarines and many nuclear power stations.
He won the Enrico Fermi Award in 1980 - honouring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy.
In his autobiography, he wrote:
""I spoke of "Burning the Rocks": the breeder, no less than controlled fusion, is an inexhaustible energy system""..... "Until then I had never quite appreciated the full significance of the breeder. But now I became obsessed with the idea that humankind's whole future depended on the breeder"..... "Although the molten salt system was never allowed to show its full capability as a breeder, a 233U - 232Th thermal breeder was demonstrated in Admiral Rickover's Shippingport reactor...Whether, as cheap uranium becomes scarce, other reactors will be fuelled with 233U and thorium remains to be seen".....
"Why didn't the molten salt system, so elegant and so well thought-out, prevail?...Perhaps the moral to be drawn is that technology that differs too much from existing technology has not one hurdle to overcome - to demonstrate its feasibility - but another even greater one - to convince influential individuals and organizations who are intellectually and emotionally attached to a different technology that they should adopt the new path. This, the molten salt system could not do. It was a successful technology that was dropped because it was too different from the main lines of reactor development. But if weaknesses in other systems are eventually revealed, I hope that in a second nuclear era, molten salt technology will be resurrected"
""I spoke of "Burning the Rocks": the breeder, no less than controlled fusion, is an inexhaustible energy system""..... "Until then I had never quite appreciated the full significance of the breeder. But now I became obsessed with the idea that humankind's whole future depended on the breeder"..... "Although the molten salt system was never allowed to show its full capability as a breeder, a 233U - 232Th thermal breeder was demonstrated in Admiral Rickover's Shippingport reactor...Whether, as cheap uranium becomes scarce, other reactors will be fuelled with 233U and thorium remains to be seen".....
"Why didn't the molten salt system, so elegant and so well thought-out, prevail?...Perhaps the moral to be drawn is that technology that differs too much from existing technology has not one hurdle to overcome - to demonstrate its feasibility - but another even greater one - to convince influential individuals and organizations who are intellectually and emotionally attached to a different technology that they should adopt the new path. This, the molten salt system could not do. It was a successful technology that was dropped because it was too different from the main lines of reactor development. But if weaknesses in other systems are eventually revealed, I hope that in a second nuclear era, molten salt technology will be resurrected"
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The second nuclear era is upon us: uranium is becoming scarcer, harder to get and therefore more expensive. Another 35 tonnes of nuclear 'waste' created by LWrs, for every GWyear that passes (fortunately, as soon as LFTRs start to be deployed, they can 'burn up waste' as fuel.
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Now that Weinberg's no longer with us, who's carrying the torch now?
Kirk Sorensen - That's who!
Kirk (Indiana) is Chief Nuclear Technologist with Teledyne Brown Engineering and studying for a PhD at the University of Tennessee. Hidden from human view for over 30 years before Kirk's re-discovery, Weinberg's records, written on real paper, about the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), (thorium) fuelled Kirk's fertile mind, initiating a chain reaction amongst like-minded people, which is building towards criticality as we speak. Kirk managed to talk to Weinberg, before he died in 2006, who responded to his current thinking on Molten Salt Reactors by saying it was a good idea then and it's still a good idea now. In his Google Tech Talks video, Energy from thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor, Kirk Says (00:22:22) "When he [Weinberg] says breeder, he means the ability to burn up thorium ... I understand that kind of zeal and passion, because I feel the same way myself. I really feel like this discovery of thorium and its potential has Earth shattering consequences for us. And that indeed, if we are going to have a sustainable and industrial society on this planet, that it’s going to be dependant on this technology"
------------------------------------------------------//-----------------------------------------------------Kirk's doing his best to light the fuse in the USA by talking to all-and-sundry, doing classy presentations, blogging, podcasting, making videos; in fact, completely dedicated to LFTR implementation.
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By comparison, my lonely Blog, with apparently little support, or of little interest to anyone, is a pathetic shadow of Kirk's efforts, but I hope I can make headway, because if it takes off in the USA (or anywhere else), UK Ltd. will lose the best opportunity for industrial success, since World War II.
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Apathy cancels out Love.
The population of Leeds is 715,404, living in 320,657 homes. A city of 1 million people uses 1 GW of electricity, so every person uses 1 kW of electricity continuously (this is like burning a one-bar electric fire all day, every day). A city dweller doesn't just use domestic electricity but (for a city way of life) wants shops, offices, supermarkets, industry, street lights, traffic lights, tap water, sewage and waste disposal. This is what makes up the continuous 1 kW use.
Supplying 1 GW of electricity for a year, burns 3,200,000 tons of coal, which is also a volume of 3,200,000 cubic metres. The average Leeds home, of 2.23 persons, continuously using 2.23 kW of electricity requires about 8 tonnes of coal to be burned in a year (8 cubic metres).
If this coal 'trickled' out of your wires continuously, in one year (let's say, in one room) you would accumulate a cube of coal, with all sides 2 metres x 2 metres square (that's as high as the top of your door).
Could you also picture the pile of toxic and radioactive fly-ash the burning of this coal leaves behind, it would form a cube with all sides measuring 1¼ metres x 1¼ metres square. The 20 tons of greenhouse gasses also produced, would just add to every body's troubles.
If a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) had supplied that amount of electricity it would have used a cube of thorium with all sides measuring 5.2 mm x 5.2 mm square and an amount of long-lived (relatively) radioactive waste that would be like a piece of grit. And, this waste, with a half-life of 30 years, is safely down to background radiation levels (like the rocks and soil around us) in 300 years; nothing like the hundreds of thousands of years, for the waste from present-day working reactors and easily managed. No greenhouse gasses would be emitted.
You wouldn't carry on filling your house with coal and fly ash, if you wanted a pleasant future for your children and grandchildren, but you allow it to fill their world of the future.
Continue with your apathy over fossil fuel use and all your other efforts for their futures will be wasted. Learn more about LFTRs; email me on: lftrs@hotmail.co.uk
