"....we care about their plight and we want them to join one world...."

David Cameron says to the poorest people in the world "....we care about their plight...." ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13572427 )

UK Official Developmen­t Assistance in 2010 is estimated at £8,354 million. Were the UK to build the first-of-a­-kind Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), it would cost a piddling £300 million. This uniquely safe type of nuclear reactor can generate electrical power cheaper than coal, is free of greenhouse gas emissions and is affordable to developing nations and regions. This move would kick-start investment in the production­-line manufactur­e of transporta­ble modular reactors, capable of rapid deployment­.

If the developed world, where ¼ of humanity uses ¾ of the energy produced, is not prepared to make this technology available to the ¾ of humanity surviving on the remaining ¼ of the energy, then let it reap the polluting whirlwind of huge increases in the burning of fossil fuels. All power to those in the developing world, in their dash for affordable energy from fossil fuel; who, in their right mind, would not want to mitigate 40,000 deaths per day from preventabl­e causes, in the most expedient way possible.

Prime Minister David Cameron: Save £50 billion of our Hard Earned Taxes.

One last gasp effort from me:  I've just created a Downing Street e-petition which, if we get enough votes, can force a Parliamentary debate to manufacture the first-of-a-kind LFTR in the UK and encourage investment in production-line manufacture of Modular LFTRs.

From the best estimates of costs, we can get £50 billion chopped off the £110 billion Chris Huhne has earmarked for spending on energy efficiency, renewables and CC&S. So, please sign this petition and, if you feel so inclined, please write to the PM to suggest better ways of spending £50 billion than spending it on inconsequential renewables and CC&S.

e-petition: Save £50 billion in taxes of the £110 billion carbon target spend

The Rt Revd Lord Bishop of Hereford - Batting for LFTRs

Lord Bishop of Hereford, Rt Revd Anthony Priddis   

Written Answers

       Tuesday 24 May 2011                   

Energy: Nuclear Reactors

Questions

Asked by The Lord Bishop of Hereford

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Marland on 4 May (WA 157) on liquid fluoride thorium reactors, what assessment they have made of the independence of the assessment undertaken by the National Nuclear Laboratory, given the involvement of Nexia Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels.[HL9194]

Written Answer By: The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland): Nexia Solutions was a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), which focused on research and development. In 2008, it was transferred out of BNFL under the Energy Act Transfer Scheme to form the National Nuclear Laboratory, which is an independent company, owned wholly by Her Majesty's Government and is operated as a commercial entity under the management of a consortium led by Serco. The assessment referred to in (WA 157) was a position paper produced entirely by the NNL at its own initiative. While it is assumed that the technical expertise retained by the NNL from Nexia has underpinned the opinions in the paper, no assessment of the paper has been undertaken by my department.           

----------------------------//-----------------------------

To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the independent assessment undertaken by the National Nuclear Laboratory, what plans they have to undertake further independent work to address issues associated with liquid fluoride thorium reactors.[HL9195]

To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the readiness of the Government of China to undertake research and development work on liquid fluoride thorium reactors, whether they will commit to more work, either nationally or with international partners, on this source of energy.[HL9197]

Written Answer By: The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland):

As noted in the Answer to your Question of 26 April 2011, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked the NNL to conduct further analysis of the wider benefits of next generation reactor designs and to compare the use of thorium and uranium fuels in them. This study includes assessments of safety, radio-toxicological hazard, scale, economics, and outstanding technical barriers. Molten salt reactors, within which category liquid thorium fluoride reactors fall, are one of the reactor designs being considered. We are expecting the findings of this study to be available by the end of the summer.                                                     ----

-----------------------------//--------------------------------

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will commission independent work specifically on the safety, cleanliness, scale and economics of liquid fluoride thorium reactors and any particular advantages they may offer in the United Kingdom context. [HL9196]

Written Answer By: The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland): The Government support relevant R&D into nuclear technologies through a range of mechanisms and organisations, including universities and research councils, the National Nuclear Laboratory, the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and others. Any future R&D on liquid thorium fluoride reactors would be done through these organisations. Findings of the NNL's forthcoming study and the position of potential international partners on this technology would be expected to inform any decision to support any new R&D.

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,

BBC Radio 4 - Home Planet.

LFTRs make it to the UK airwaves! Is this it? Fame at last! Catch it while you can - it's only available for 7 days. This is the webpage link and you can download it as a podcast or just listen to it. The LFTRs bit starts at 18:03:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/homeplanet 

Get some emails into Home Planet or Radio 4 - let's see if we can get a bit more exposure.

Those were the days! Slide-Rules, Tee-Squares and Protractors.

I've made up a 'Handout' from some PowerPoint slides, to distribute at an Institute of Physics (IoP) presentation next week: Fukushima - Lessons Learnt.

It's intended to be printed off as a double-sided A4 sheet, which anyone can do and use it as a handout/cribsheet/whatever. When you open the link, you need to click the blue 'File' tab in the top left-hand corner and scroll down to 'Print'.

50% of what needs to be done was achieved 'in t' gud ode days', when we overworked the pencil sharpeners. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think how quickly and efficiently we could get to the first-of-a-kind LFTR, in these days of computer modelling and planning and CAD/CAM.

https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx/11%2007%2014%20Warrington%20Hand%20Out.docx?cid=4cd828679926f5ca&sc=documents&Bsrc=Docmail&Bpub=SDX.Docs

Drumming Up Votes for LFTRs on 38 Degrees.

I'm on 'Google Alerts' for things Nuclear, which comes up with many opportunities to add comments to on-line articles about varied nuclear subjects. Below is a copy of one of my responses to such an article and my hope is that anyone reading this might be disposed to respond in a similar manner to any article on which they might comment. Please help where you can to get votes on 38 degrees for LFTRs - would you all please ask your friends on facebook if they would care to vote also?

----------------------//----------------------

The first-of-a-kind Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) could be up and running in 5 years, at the piddling cost of £300 million. There are half a dozen UK companies that could manufacture this (glorified) hot-salt chemical plant, so 5 years after that, 100 MWe modular LFTRs could be rolling off production lines at one per day, for £150 million each. In 2 years, we could replace all of our coal and gas fired power stations (LFTRs are load-following), at a cost of £30 billion per year for 2 years - saving £50 billion from the £110 billion Chris Huhne just announced in the Commons.
38 degrees is a Campaigning Organisation which can lobby parliament on behalf of important causes and your vote for LFTRs is needed. LFTR manufacture would create manufacturing jobs, growth and prosperity not seen in 3 generations. See: http://38degrees.uservoice.com/forums/78585-campaign-suggestions/suggestions/2017457-uk-manufacture-of-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors?ref=title 

Nick Griffin advocates LFTRs to EU Environmental Committee.

Way back on 19 April 2011, with a cerebral perception, removed from the peculiar racist part of his brain and, what seemed, a genuine concern for people with black skin subjected to increasing starvation caused by biofuel production, Nick Griffin promoted LFTRs.

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/04/nick-griffin-leaves-climate-change-eurocrats-speechless/

Whilst he dismissed Global Warming  he homed in on Peak Oil as the basis for EU consideration of LFTRs.

What a waste of a consumate communicator, to have a mind filled with protecting his nationalism (whatever that is), when he should be using all of that grey matter in the cause of promoting the technology to save all humanity.

Help! I need Somebody, Help!

<><><><>

The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change Mr Tim Yeo MP (Chair)                                             Dan Byles MP Barry Gardiner MP Ian Lavery MP Dr Philip Lee MP Albert Owen MP Christopher Pincher MP                                          John Robertson MP Laura Sandys MP Sir Robert Smith MP Dr Alan Whitehead MP	(Con) (Con) (Lab) (Lab) (Con) (Lab) (Con) (Lab) (Con) (LD) (Lab)

We picked the side and Manager Chris Huhne and they hold the future of the UK's Nuclear Industry in their hands and control the spend of  £billions of hard-earned taxpayers' money. 

They could spend the piddling £300 million, to get the first-of-a-kind LFTR up and running in 5 years and subsidies UK manufacturing, to get the first-off production lines units available in 10 years. Then we substitute emission-free, load-following LFTRs for our coal burning and natural gas power stations - Voila! in 15 years we could be on a fast-track to meeting our carbon targets at a massively lower cost than any other method.

OR

They could literally pour OUR money down the drain in subsidies for CC&S and Wind and Solar Renewables. Surely, in everybody's heart-of-hearts, they must know that believing these technologies can provide 100% of our future energy needs, 100% of the time, is just wishful thinking. And, at what price ecological destruction and greenhouse gas emissions?

Taxpaying voters, I need you - email every one of these Select Committee Members  ( http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/ ) to demand they invite Kirk Sorensen over to present the LFTR case to them and their Nuclear Advisers. If you don't get a positive response, email your own MP and get them to lobby the Committee Members to positively move on a LFTRs study.

Safety of Light Water Reactors (LWRs)

Alvin Weinberg invented and held the patents on Light Water Reactors (LWRs). The UK's new-build nuclear programme is selecting from Areva's EPR or Westinghouse's AP1000, both of which are a version of an LWR known as Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs); these are also the most prevalent civil nuclear reactor currently in use. The Fukushima plants are Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), which are another version of LWRs.

The reactor vessels of LWRs contain pressurised water (wanting to turn to steam, if depressurised) or steam, at about 160 times atmospheric pressure. This is a high energy 'driver' capable of expelling radioactive substances into the atmosphere. Accidental and planned depressurisation played parts in both Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents. The degree of atrophying of the nuclear industry, resulting from TMI, may well be amplified, in coming years, because of Fukushima.

The Enrico Fermi Award, presented to scientists of international standing for their contribution to energy - 1980, Alvin Weinberg.

This is a man who should be listened to; his opinions are important.

Weinberg railed against the use of LWRs for civil use, because of his awareness of their safety-fallibility. As Director of Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), conducting experiments and operations of Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs),he argued vehemently for the use of one such MSR, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure and have no pressure 'driver', or any other form of driver (such as highly reactive chemicals), to expel radioactive substances into the environment. Weinberg went head-to-head with the political and military paymasters of the nuclear programme, in the criticism of LWRs and the promotion of the safety superiority of LFTRs, and for this, he was asked to leave the nuclear industry. His loss to ORNL, meant that his work had a short-lived legacy, withering on the vine until funds were withdrawn in the early 70s.

Until his dying day, Weinberg thought that the Earth's inexhaustible thorium resources would be the future of energy supply for all of humankind.

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.”

In saying ‘breeder’, he was talking about the transmutat­ion of thorium232 to fissile Uranium233 in a LFTR.

Sunday 30 March 2011, reported in The Telegraph,  Chris Huhne said: "Globally, this undoubtedly casts a shadow over the renaissance of the nuclear industry. That is blindingly obvious."

I intend to vociferously lobby Chris Huhne and all members the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change to consider, over and above the views of the Committee's expert witnesses, the views of the inventor of LWRs in respect of their safety and his desire to invest civil society with the ultimate in electricity and heat generation - the LFTR.

It's Now or Never!

The text of Kirk Sorensen's interview for ABC News (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/18/3168019.htm?section=world) shows how he was allowed to make the case for LFTRs being several orders of magnitude safer than the the vast majority world's current LWR fleet.



Can we ever guarantee to
second-guess nature? 



The history case, linking to Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of the LWR, is mighty pursuasive in terms of presenting the information to the public at large. However, LFTR advocates need to be at the politicians and their expert advisers, who we know will have their backs to the wall, defending decades of pouring money into a safety-fallable, uranium-fuelled nuclear industry.


I've already emailed Chris Huhne, with the link to this article, suggesting he'd better move quickly on LFTRs, if he wants to stand a chance of meeting our carbon targets. He needs to  bear in mind what the gathering storm, from the massed ranks of the viscerally driven anti-nukes will do to his new-build nuclear programme.

I now plan to email him with a 'formal' request (if there is such a thing within the machinery of the studies his department carry out) for a study to be conducted on prototyping the first-of-a-kind (FOAK) LFTRs (to pre-production status). A further study, on production line manufacture of (say) 100 MWe units capable of being transported on a flat-bed truck, is also needed.

Anybody in the UK who reads this and is so inclined, I hope you will bang-on to your MP, to urge Chris Huhne to get LFTRs onto his energy agenda, with utmost urgency.

Swimming Upstream.

22 Nuclear Experts emailed and not a single useful reply!!



Are we ever going to make it?

There's a white noise out there, of competing SMRs and Fast Breeders which, by combining characteristics, can get to all of the advantages LFTRs have to offer.

LFTRs do it all, in one unique package - the cheapest, the simplest, the safest, the quickest way to quell the fears of the average man and woman in the street, about what the next 2 or 3 decades could bring down on the head of humankind.

How can we make progress against walls of apathy amongst scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs?

I am most inclined to think that only a £300 million philanthropic injection of cash, will get the first-of-a-kind LFTR to the starting blocks.

Is there anyone out there acquainted with an individual or a fund, who can give them, or it, the opportunity to be recognised for solving some of humankind's worst problems and advancing our progress (particularly of those in the developing world) by several decades.

Wanted: A Saviour (Technological not Spiritual).

A Saviour who can start immediately to solve the worst problems facing humankind.

A philanthropic individual or group, who can put up a piffling £300 million to launch the first prototype/pre-production Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), will witness the start of the worldwide adoption of the cheapest, safest and cleanest method of electricity generation of all time. Bill Gates is doing just for the Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR), which is sure to prove inconsequential.

Does anyone have a pathway through to such an individual or group? Give the £300 million to a company like Roll-Royce and within 5 years they would design and develop the first 100 MWe unit. Within 10 years, production units, at £150 million each, could be rolling off production lines at the rate of 1 per day, to replace all of the UK’s fossil fuel burning power stations in 1 to 2 years. Export potential, considering that even the poorest of countries could utilize such technology, would run into the tens of thousands of such units.

Some of the staggering advantages to humankind, our planetary environment and its ecosystems, are demonstrated by comparing methods of generating 1 GWyear of electricity, to supply a city of 1 million people for 1 year:
1. LFTRs require the mining of 200 tonnes of ore to produce the 1 tonne of thorium fuel required. By comparison: Coal – 3,200,000 tonnes has to be burned. The proposed new-build Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs) – 800,000 tonnes of ore needs to be mined, to produce 35 tonnes of enriched uranium fuel.
2. LFTRs produce no greenhouse gasses. Coal – 8,500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gasses and airborne pollution. PWRs – produce no greenhouse gasses.
3. LFTRs produce 170 kgs of ‘long-lived’ radiotoxic waste, which decays to background radiation levels in 300 years. Coal – 600,000 tonnes of toxic/radioactive fly-ash. PWRs – 35 tonnes of radiotoxic waste, some of which takes hundreds of thousands of years to decay to background radiation levels.
4. The estimated average cost of electricity from LFTR generation is the lowest of any form of generation. This is the average levelised cost, including all costs of construction, financing, fuel and all other operating and decommissioning costs.
5. The land area occupied by LFTR installations is only 2 to 5% of that occupied by coal or PWR power stations.

Some of the worst problems facing humankind can be solved or greatly mitigated by abundant cheap electricity from LFTRs and by the use of the high temperature waste heat from their gas turbines:
6. A hydrogen economy can be created, from which carbon-neutral fuels (from atmospheric carbon dioxide) for all forms of transport can be manufactured.
7. Ammonia can be made from the hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen, as feedstock to maintain adequate levels of nitrate fertilizers for the high levels of food production we enjoy today.
8. Potable water can be produced from the desalination of seawater or brackish groundwater, using waste heat and/or off-peak electricity, during the night.
9. Waste heat can be used for district heating, or industrial process heating, both of which dramatically improve the overall efficiency of an installation.

Other wonderful advantages of LFTRs are:
10. Load-following capability so that, apart from supplying base load, when the kettles are switched on and off during TV adverts, the reactor simply powers up and powers down. Coal-fired and conventional nuclear power stations are for base load supply only and need gas-fired or hydroelectric power station back-up.
11. Intrinsically safe, because the reactor vessel operates at atmospheric pressure and there is no driving force to expel any leaking radioactive material into the environment, such as steam in a PWR, or highly reactive sodium in a Liquid Metal Fast Reactor (LMFR).
12. Needing start-up fissile material, LFTRs can ‘burn’ the existing nuclear ‘waste’ from military and civil reactors and eliminate long term storage of radiotoxic materials.
13. Far more proliferation resistant than reactors using conventional uranium fuels.
14. There is enough thorium to supply the energy needs, at developed-world standards, of everyone on the planet, for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years.

I'm going to try to post this on every appropriate forum I come across and as a comment in any suitable blog posting. We'll see what kind of response is forthcoming!

Archbishop Rowan - Just one of who knows how many insulated leaders?

From his office of Public Affairs, it is thought: "....unlikely that he will choose to seek to make the Church of England support one particular response to the technological challenges surrounding the environmental crisis.".



I accidentally stumbled across my first bit of information about LFTRs and within 24 hours, my feelings were in complete accord with Kirk Sorensen's, when he says, in his 'Google Tech Talks' video: "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 dependent on this technology".

It's such a pity the Archbishop is only fed the information other individuals think fit and , sadly, because LFTR articles in the general public media are a bit thin on the ground, it's unlikely he'll ever stumble and fall for LFTRs.

Dan Brown - Get your teeth into this!!

40 Years of Planetary desecration - Maybe

theWorst 40 Years in History.

Is it more than just deeply irreligious?

Is it a Conspiracy Theory??

Scary or what? - Had LFTRs made the breakthrough those 40 years ago: Would sea-ice be melting? Would glaciers be retreating? Would permafrost be releasing methane? Would oceans be as acidic? Would the developing world be developed? Would population be declining? Would resource availability crises be postponed? Would Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, The Gulf of Mexico have happened? Would all of those millions of early deaths from pollution have been avoided?

The Da Vinci Code has got nothing on this! It is so mind-blowingly incomprehensible that the LFTR concept did not rocket into existence, that dark forces must be at work.

If, like Dan Brown, you can invoke forces for good, versus forces for evil, playing on the stage of human development, you'll need a lot of imagination to introduce black, rolling, thundering-and-lightening clouds into the plot, when the only manifestation, in the developed world, is mass complacency, apathy and an air of 'life's pretty good, what's the problem?'. Truly, 'out of sight, out of mind' is as dark a dark force as it gets and it's common to the general public, politicians and all other pillars of society.

Because there is something almost irreligious about the whole issue, I sense that attacking the human failures holding development and production of LFTRs at bay,can best be achieved through the symbiosis of religion and politics. The Lords Spiritual have politically committed to: 'development of environmentally friendly sources of energy' and 'rethinking the development agenda in a way that makes sense of the unprecedented human security challenges posed by climate change'.

I have written to the Public Affairs office of The Archbishop of Canterbury, to see if opportunities exist, to present the wider context of the LFTRs case to a wider religious audience.

Watch this space!

We've Hoped! We've Prayed! Now Let's Do Something!!

They ought to do something about it!

Every time you see it, your heart feels like a brick, and somebody, somewhere should do something to make it right!

Those of us who have beliefs, pray for intervention and their relief from such deprivation. The rest of us just hope that politics, free-markets, capitalism, world banks, charity, anything...will improve things and stop this from happening again. After we've done our praying and hoping, it's back to life; we've got a living to make, mortgage to pay, clothes to put on backs, heating and lighting bills to pay and our favourite charities to support. It's not all that sumptuous, but life's pretty good.


Couldn't life be just that little bit fairer?

At the very least, everybody ought to have food on the table! And then, shouldn't they have clothes on their backs? Then shelter? Then warmth? Then light?

LFTRs to Power the Planet!

What's the latest plan?

The latest plan is to contact religious leaders of every conceivable denomination, in the UK, to establish if a policy can be implemented to inform, persuade, cajole or even instruct congregations to vote for a single-issue party 'The LFTRs to Power the Planet Party' at the next election. If one or more denominations are prepared to politicise their religion, over this one issue, then political impact would be ensured.

Plan 'B' would be to seek ways and means from religious leaders as to how congregations and followers can be inspired to become politically active or activists in support of LFTR production in the UK?

I'll be doing the writing and emailing to all of the multifarious leaders and I'll be reporting on the volume and nature of their responses.