PRISM is almost here and now! The UK can lead the world into the Breeder Reactor era.

Maybe before the turn of the century, LFTRs will become the pre-eminent power source for the rest of this millennium and millennia to come.  In terms of the benefits which can accrue to the UK, there isn't a ha'p'orth of difference between LFTRs and PRISMs, but the timescales are miles apart. Cold reasoning leads me to conclude that in the very near future, PRISM deployment for commercial electricity generation can become a reality for the UK, whereas LFTR technology will surely be the prerogative of the USA or China. 

We have the technical/design capabilities and the manufacturing capacity here in the UK,  to manufacture PRISMs in their entirety and if we can lead the way in this technology, the benefits to our manufacturing industry, growth and prosperity are dream-worthy.                        

Over the past couple of years I have sadly concluded that nothing much will happen in the UK, by way of Government or private investment in LFTR technology, in the next 2 or 3 decades.

I am persuaded however, that there is an opportunity for the UK to start the world on a course to widespread breeder reactor deployment, by dint of our Government's approach to GE Hitachi, to use their PRISM Breeder Reactor to solve our plutonium stockpile problem.

I have contacted GE Hitachi through the website, with the following request:

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I am going to start blogging in the UK, in support of your endeavours to persuade the UK Government to use your PRISM reactor to solve our uranium stockpile problem.

I am particularly convinced by the strength of the arguments, for PRISM to alter public perception of nuclear power, advanced in this recent 'white paper': The Case for Near-term Commercial Demonstration of the Integral Fast Reactor

The aim of my blog will be to argue for an urgent adoption by our Government of your current proposal and my hope is that we will lead the world into the inevitable era of worldwide breeder reactor deployment, for the equitable, clean, plentiful, safe and secure provision of energy for all.

Beyond, what I hope will be your first success, I will be following a blog objective of ultimately powering the UK, to the exclusion of fossil fueled and unjustifiable wind powered sources. Around 30 PRISM Power Blocks of 600 MWe each, will provide all the UK's future electrical energy needs and subsequently, with public perception changed by, say, 5 or 10 years of success of the first PRISM, I think a strong campaign could be mounted.

My reason for contacting your PR department is to ask if I could be kept up to date with the latest PRISM developments, with particular regards to your UK proposals, by way of public/press announcements, newsletters, etc.?

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Colin Megson.

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I will be switching soon to:  PRISMs to Power the UK

Anyone fancy taking this blog over, or taking up the UK LFTR banner with another UK based blog?

Breeder Reactor Advocates Across The World.

This is an extract from a new post on Brave New Climate by Barry Brook and Geoff Russell  on 20 July 2012:

Life is about choices. In 1994, Bill Clinton chose to shut down the US "fast [breeder] reactor" program.

Now the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians and the South Koreans are building these reactors.

With a fast [breeder] reactor, you get much more than 100 times the energy from the same amount of uranium. With fast [breeder] reactors you can use current nuclear waste as fuel. With fast [breeder] reactors, we can shut down all the world's coal mines. We can stop ripping up the boreal forests for tar sands in Canada and elsewhere. Bill Clinton blew it.

Fast [breeder] reactors will run on what is called depleted uranium, or on nuclear waste. There is enough of this already mined not only to shut all  the world's coal mines - but also  to make the Olympic Dam expansion unnecessary.

So our last questions to Jim are: How worried are you about those tailings? How worried are you about climate change? Worried enough to risk the occasional deathless Fukushima accident and go with clean energy from fast [breeder] reactors? Or are local scare stories more important than solving the major environmental problems and keeping our eye on the big picture?

Geoff Russell is a mathematician and long-time member of Animal Liberation in SA.
Barry Brook is professor of climate science at the University of Adelaide.


Is the Olympic Dam Mine a special case?


The full post is well worth a read. Barry Brook is one of the most mild mannered people around and his video and podcast discourses on climate change and energy are level-headed and informative. This piece is a bit rumbustious, so I imagine there's plenty of Geoff Russell in it>

The Follow Up to 'A is for Atom': 'The Saddest Accident of History'

Dear Mr. Curtis,

Someone, and I hope it will be you, has to tell the general public that Alvin Weinberg, who features in  your 'A for Atom' film , may be the most important individual in recorded history to beneficially influence the wellbeing of humankind. Such would be the result of the widespread deployment of a uniquely safe and affordable type of nuclear reactor, he developed during his time as Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

In the saddest accident of history, Alvin Weinberg, who designed and patented Light Water Reactors (LWRs), was removed from his Directorship of  ORNL (1953 - 1971) because of his opposition, on the grounds of safety, to using LWRs for civil power generation. He predicted the loss-of-coolant accidents and core meltdowns that were witnessed at Three Mile Island and Fukushima-Diiachi.


In Alvin Weinberg, we are not talking about an 'ordinary' scientist or human being; this man worked on the Manhattan Project with Nobel Laureates such as Fermi, Seaborg and Wigner and in 1980 he won The Enrico Fermi Award  -  an award honouring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. This man's views on the way forward for energy need to be taken to heart by the general public, politicians, scientists, technologists and the media.


In his autobiography, Weinberg dreamed of an Energy-Utopia for humankind, brought about by the Breeder Reactor, when he said:  ""…..I spoke of "Burning the Rocks": the breeder, no less than controlled fusion, is an inexhaustible energy system........But, because the breeder uses its raw material so efficiently, one can afford to utilize much more expensive—that is, dilute—ores, and these are practically inexhaustible. The breeder indeed will allow humankind to "Burn the Rocks" to achieve inexhaustible energy!
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. For society generally to achieve and maintain a living standard of today's developed countries depends on the availability of a relatively cheap, inexhaustible source of energy……""

When Weinberg talked about the 'breeder' he was talking about breeding the fertile Thorium232 fuel to fissile Uranium233 in a thermal spectrum Molten Salt Reactor (MSR), which he had developed at ORNL. His Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was given the go-ahead in 1960, in the days of slide-rules, tee-squares and manual machine tools; it was 'switched on' in 1965 and ran as a working reactor for many thousands of full-power hours, until 1969. At the stage when a follow-up, commercial sized 60 MWe reactor design was being finalised, Weinberg got his marching orders because of his vociferous opposition to the use of LWRs for civil purposes. Work on MSRs virtually ceased and over the next few decades, the equipment and personnel 'evaporated'; all that remained was a paperwork archive. The technology with the potential to give hope for a brighter future was compacted into the corner of a room and covered in dust for 30 years, until its rediscovery in 2000.

Widespread deployment of LFTRs means affordable, clean energy for everyone, forever. If that now 40 year delay in the introduction of this technology is not the saddest accident of history, I don't know what is.

The story needs to be told on mainstream TV for the technology to have any chance of taking hold in the mind of the public at large; this has to be the best chance of getting anything moving quickly into the political arena. Are you prepared to give such a documentary project your serious consideration?

Regards,

Colin Megson.

Weinberg's sagacity shines at 17:45 and 36:06:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS01DaQUu3g 

Alvin M. Weinberg's Legacy.

What does humankind already owe Alvin Weinberg - Well, he invented Light Water Reactors, so how many millions or billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions has that saved? How many millions of premature deaths from fossil fuel burning pollution has that prevented?

If LFTR are widely deployed, Weinberg's obsession becomes reality. In his autobiography Weinberg confessed:

"I became obsessed with the idea that humankind's whole future depended on the breeder. For Society generally to achieve and maintain a standard of living of today's developed countries depends on the availability of relatively cheap, inexhaustible sources of energy."

Of course, he was talking about breeding fissile uranium from thorium, with thorium's abundance capable of supplying all of our energy needs for hundreds of thousands of years (to all intents and purposes - inexhaustible)

Let's hope and let's dream it happens and then, in terms of the debt humanity owes to an individual, Weinberg will be at the pinnacle.