1986 - US MEDIA'S COVERAGE OF CHERNOBYL SHUTS OUT FUKUSHIMA-TYPE ACCIDENT AT AMERICAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT!

26 years ago and only 3 weeks before Chernobyl, a US reactor underwent a Common Mode Failure of the type which devastated the Fukushima-Diiachi reactors. 70 scientists and technologists were jammed into the reactor control room in, what ordinary folks would have considered, a suicide pact. At that point, the Common Mode Failure occured and nature took its course.

 In Dr John Sackett's word:  ".....the worst accident that could befall a nuclear power system, that worst accident is a complete loss of electric power to everything, back-up as well, and failure of all the safety systems that shut the reactor down...."

  

Left - Darrell Pfannensteil, Shift Supervisor
Centre - Dr John Sackett, Director
Right - Dick Lindsey, Director of Communications

This is exactly what happened at Fukushima-Diiachi -  after all of the electricity from the reactors themselves was turned off, along came the sunami and knocked out all of the back-up systems. The result was a catastrophe.

Darrell Pfannensteil was issuing instructions to his plant operators as the event occured. He had told colleagues beforehand that he was not scared of this type of accident occuring, so what was his response? In his own words:  ".....we got to watch the forces of nature shut the reactor down.....we'd found a reactor that could protect itself....."

 Later, Darrel's experience of working on EBR-II, lead him to draw a comparison with the predominant nuclear reactor used for power generation, the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). ".....I did have experience - about 6 years - on pressurised water reactors.....if I [n]ever see another pressurised water reactor, it would not bother me. This is the technology to go with....."

After 33 years of dedicated, productive work, the political decision to shut down EBR-II was made and in September 1994, Dr Sackett recollects that:  "....when I had to go to the operating crews and tell them we'd got the order to shut EBR-II down.....the reaction amongst all the crews was - doesn't the country realise what they're losing here?....". Near to tears, he goes on to say:  ".....I remember directing the shut-down---and the scram---and just silence...."


You witness men saddened by their knowledge of what the world has turned away from and bemused by the decades lost before we all have to accept the deployment of breeder reactor technology. And what of the planetary desecration that has been allowed to happen in those decades? When these vociferous anti-nuclear activists are finall silenced, will they still puff out their chests as they plug in their electric cars, but then will they also switch on the light in their air conditioned living room, turn on the TV and wrap-around sound system, sit back and think about those wasted decades? Probably not.

All of this can be seen on :  http://vimeo.com/35261457

Martin Durkin - We Need You! Tell the Story of Alvin Weinberg and LFTRs

http://www.martindurkin.com/webform/contact

This is my email to Martin Durkin on 11 November 2011. So far, it has gone unanswered. 

Dear Mr. Durkin,

I am a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) advocate and host the only UK Blog on the topic "LFTRs to Power the Planet":  http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/

The history of this uniquely safe and affordable nuclear power-generating reactor is a Greek Tragedy because, had it been deployed 40 years ago when the technology was 90% proven on an operating reactor, the world would not be in the polluted mess it is now. Since LFTRs can be used for the manufacture of liquid fuels, Peak Oil would still be in the distant future as hydrocarbons would only have been used for the stuff we need and not just burned for energy. 

Instead, it was side-lined in favour of the Light Water Reactor (LWR) which produced plutonium for bombs; Three Mile Island was a Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) plant, which is a one version of a LWR and Fukushima had the other version, a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR).

The story which needs to be told is that of Alvin Weinberg, under who's Directorship, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) was conducted; this operating reactor produced power from 1965 to 1969 and the design is the basis for what we now call the LFTR.

After working on the Manhattan Project, Weinberg joined forces with Admiral Rickover in designing a nuclear propulsion reactor for the Nautilus Class Submarines and it is he who invented and patented the LWR. However, when LWRs were being considered for civil power generation, Weinberg predicted the loss-of-coolant/meltdown accidents (since witnessed at Three Mile Island and Fukushima) and railed against their use. Instead, Weinberg championed the intrinsically safe Molten Salt Reactor (MSR - now LFTR) and for his troubles, in 1972 he was asked to resign from his pursuit of further MSR development at ORNL, by a Congressman in the LWR camp.

Worldwide deployment of low-cost, modular LFTRs, capable of being transported on flat-bed vehicles and container-ships are affordable by the developing world. LFTRs can supply all of the energy requirements of every individual on the planet (at developed world standards), for hundreds of thousands of years, from the near inexhaustible resources of thorium fuel. Thorium is so energy dense that the ground under your feet can supply energy more cheaply than any other fuel - Weinberg described it as "mining the rocks..."

There is no other form of energy supply that is less environmentally destructive and capable of worldwide deployment. We have to dream that the raising of the standard of living of the most deprived and deserving will solve many of the worst problems facing humankind.

This 40 year stasis of a solution to the world's energy woes has brought us to turbulent times of great inequality; if this is not the saddest 'Accident of History', I don't know what is.

Would you consider telling the story, in your much-admired fashion?

Regards,

Colin Megson.

Lord Hutton wants to use all of the tools in the (nuclear power) box!

Lord Hutton, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association was interviewed by Oliver Wright of The Independant on 06 August 2011 :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hutton-fears-nuclear-industry-has-lost-confidence-of-the-public-2332663.html
The report concluded with this statement: "The industry faces a very big challenge in responding to Fukushima and we will have to use all of the tools in the box to do so," Lord Hutton said.

There are a lot of unwieldy cross-cut saws in your tool box, Lord Hutton, which are safe most of the time but can take your finger off, if you don't watch out (PWRs). On the other hand, the spokeshave  so elegant in design and so inherently safe, is utterly absent and not even discussed (LFTRs).

Surely, sometime, somewhere, someone in Government or advising Government has to take this technology to heart and give UK manufacturing a chance at a piece of the action, before it's too late and the imports from China start to roll in.

I can only keep plugging away - anyone who reads this can have a pop at anyone who they think should be listening. This is my letter to Lord Hutton: 

                                                                                     06 August 2011.

     Lord Hutton of Furness

     Westminster,

     House of Lords,

     London,

     SW1A 0PW.

Dear Lord Hutton,

“Fukushima has changed the game”:

Your interview with The Independent, reported by Oliver Wright today has prompted me to write to you regarding my correspondence with Professor Paul Howarth of the NNL. I enclose my original letter and a copy of his reply.

Please note that I am asking no more than an opportunity for Kirk Sorensen, the world’s leading authority on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs), to present the case to you, or the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, or your NNL or other nuclear advisors.

You could bury the primary circuit of a 100 MWe LFTR in the middle of Wembley Stadium and you would be hard pushed to design an accident that would expel radiotoxic substances to the endangerment of a capacity crowd. Gravity is the only force acting upon the molten reactor core of a LFTR and nothing short of a direct hit by an asteroid or a ‘bunker-buster’ will move stuff upwards and out.

If you want to get the UK public onside, in respect of promoting the safety of nuclear power generation, find the cheapest way of meeting our carbon targets and kick-start a technology with which UK manufacturing can fully cope, then LFTRs become the unique front-runner for consideration.

I would be most interested to know if you have fully investigated LFTR potential. If you have, would you be kind enough to apprise me of your findings. If you have not, are there any prospects of you inviting Kirk Sorensen over to present the up to date information to you and your colleagues and staff?

Yours sincerely,

Dear Prime Minister

                                                                                                           21 May 2011.

10 Downing Street,
London,
SW1A 2AA,

For the attention of the Rt. Hon. David Cameron.

Dear Prime Minister

“I want us to be the greenest government ever”.

A year ago at the DECC, these were your very words and to do this, you are taking a predictable route of giving everybody in the mix a little bit, but inordinately pouring money into the populist option of renewables. This will divert much needed investment away from the NHS and other essential services.

May I propose ‘Plan B’, to take you into realms of ‘greenness’ about which you can only dream, meet our carbon targets ahead of time, take a huge chunk out of our £14 billion or so energy trade deficit and maximize energy independence.

You will not know of the capacity of this home-based resource, but you will be able to raise a green banner behind which every environmentalist can get. Not one extra square inch of our precious land need be sacrificed in accessing this fuel which can provide all of the UK’s electricity needs for the next 50 years and, it will be free of greenhouse gas emissions.

This resource is the lifeless, environmental abomination of fly-ash, with an average thorium content of 17 parts per million. Mining 60,000 tonnes of fly-ash yields 1 tonne of thorium, which can supply 1 GWyear of electricity; this is enough for all the electrical needs of a city of 1 million people for 1 year. Preposterous as it seems, 3,200,000 tonnes of coal have to be imported (£80 million) to supply the same amount of electricity, which means that the energy from fly-ash thorium yields 50 times more energy than the original coal burned.

You will need to spend a piddling £300 million on the first-of-a-kind 100 MWe Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR), which can be available in 5 years and factory produced units rolling off production lines in 10 years. Unlike PWRs (the UK’s new-build nuclear), LFTRs have extraordinary intrinsic, passive safety characteristics, making them capable of surviving a Fukushima level incident unscathed.

Extraordinary courage is needed to do something so revolutionary and such thoughts are likely to be kept away from you. However, I do hope your ‘knowledge filterers’ let you have a look at this data, for no other reason than it being an eye-opening ‘thought for the day’.

I must see what Archbishop Rowan has to say.

Yours sincerely,