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 

'In Our Time' and Tom Morris - Where are you, when you're needed most?

I stumbled across this old 'plea' of mine from 10 months ago, trying to get Tom Morris to 'do' the story of Wigner, Weinberg and MSRs. I believe now, as I did then, that an IOT programme in which Melvyn Bragg could describe and develop 'the saddest accident of history' would make one of the most memorable IOT programmes ever; it would reveal facts of 20th Century history never previously presented to BBC listeners (or viewers).

Dear Tom Morris,

Suggestions for future In Our Time Programmes.

May I suggest a subject which is paradoxical in the extreme? I speak of a 50 year old, proven technology which can solve many of the worst problems facing humankind, including the cessation of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses emissions and mitigation of population growth.

Experimentation into this technology in the USA, in the early 1950s, revealed that it was militarily ineffective and thereafter, research and development was done on shoestring financing, with low-key attention to the enormity of the potential benefits in the civilian sphere. Even though operational units were producing results which gave rise to great optimism, all work ceased in the early 70’s and all that remained was a paper archive, recording what had been achieved and what the future could hold.

This paper goldmine gathered dust for 30 years, when it was unearthed by an Indiana Jones figure, who poured over every word and discovered a story of political/military in-fighting. The winners went on to give us the world we have today and the losers lost the opportunity to have prevented the past 50 years of escalating greenhouse gasses emissions.

Within the past month, the Chinese have announced their intentions to pursue this technology through a programme of manufacture, and claim all of the associated intellectual property. In the UK, the economics of meeting our future energy needs and carbon targets by using this technology, could be so compelling that we might well be importing Chinese-made units by the container ship full, within a couple of decades.

I’m absolutely convinced this subject would be a perfect topic for In Our Time, with Kirk (Indiana) Sorensen being able to describe the rediscovery of the work done by Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and their dedication to the promotion of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).

With sufficient thorium available to fuel the energy needs of everyone on the planet for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years, at developed-world standards, LFTRs effectively give us all of the benefits of energy from fusion now. The effect LFTRs can have on the future of humankind is immeasurable and hardly anyone knows about it. In Our Time revelations would go a long way to remedying this.

Regards,

Colin Megson.

Dylan Ryan of Glasgow, Age 32. Speaks English, and writes it very verbosely indeed.

Read the first paragraph of the 1200 word introduction to his blog ‘daryanenergyblog’ and he seems quite a reasonable chap. Obviously ‘daryan12’ self-described as: Engineer, expertise: Energy, Sustainability, Computer Aided Engineering, Renewables technology is going to answer his rhetorical question: “how do we continue to meet the worlds insatiable desire for energy?”

Read a little bit of the 3300 words of ‘Nuclear Reality Check – Chapter 2’ and there’s no doubt the vitriol, ridicule and selective ‘facts’ and opinions are the characteristic utterances of a typical anti-nuclear campaigner. Read a bit of the 7100 words of ‘Nuclear Reality Check – Chapter 3’ and you get the lot! What this guy doesn’t know about the nuclear industry – what it’s doing and where it’s going – isn’t worth knowing.

Part 8 – The Molten Salt Reactor concept: in 9100 words, Dylan debunks 18 years of work, by Alvin Weinberg and his team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Just a reminder: Alvin Weinberg was a protégée of Nobel Laureate, Eugene Wigner, when they worked together on the Manhattan project. Weinberg won the Enrico Fermi Award in 1980; the Citation reads: In recognition of his pioneering contributions to reactor theory, design, and systems; for untiring work to make nuclear energy serve the public good, both safely and economically; for inspiring leadership of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and for wise counsel to the executive and legislative branches of the government.

The MSR debunker’s level of expertise: What a howler - but you can see how it came about! When the thrill of debunking gets ahead of your brain, it’s easy to put his interpretation of the Wikipedia diagram as the operating fluid of the (Brayton) turbine being ‘a mixture of molten salt and fluoride fuel’ – because it’s yellow (like the core salt in the diagram). From this howler, he concludes by telling the world that the turbine will cost more than the reactor.

But, debunker-extraordinaire, this is how it really works: the (primary circuit) core salt passes heat to a coolant salt, via a low-pressure salt/salt heat exchanger; this non-radioactive (secondary circuit) coolant salt exits the primary containment and passes heat to a high pressure helium gas, via a salt/gas heat exchanger, and it is the helium which drives a closed cycle Brayton gas turbine.

The 3000 word ‘Part 11 – Summary and Conclusions is well worth suffering, as the excitement builds up in anticipation of the sagacious answer to the question posed at the very beginning. In the penultimate paragraph, the question has decayed (excuse the nuclear pun) to: “can renewables close the gap?” and further: “Can we seriously power the world without (neither) fossil fuels nor nuclear power?”

And his answer is – wait for it – wait for it: “I’m going to take the coward’s way out and answer that I honestly don’t know! The answer to that question depends entire on the context in which one asks it (I’m planning a future article where I will tease this one out).” What does that mean? Can’t wait to find out the answer, you little tease you! Only kidding – I don’t intend to read another word of your expert comment!

PS: thanks for the links to ‘LFTRs to Power the Planet’. Any chance you could add your vote to ‘UK manufacture of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors’ on ‘38 Degrees’? We’re down to 86^th now.