Baroness Worthington gets William and Kate onside for Thorium

60 years ago, the young Queen Elizabeth II was handed a plastic bag containing plutonium The 
drama of plutonium 









And here's Baroness Bryony Worthington moving the debate into the 'SECOND NUCLEAR ERA':  Baroness Worthington at TEAC4 Only a matter of a week or two ago, in front of throng of thorium supporters, she came up with the 'sound-bite' of the decade - the Duchess of Cambridge being handed a gift-wrapped package of thorium. We'll be on all of the front pages tomorrow!!!

And guess who's handing the package over?  It's Will himself!

Oliver Tickell - A Semi-Informed, Strong, Unshakable, Renewables Advocate.

This is the 'Briefing' document authored by Oliver Tickell, April/May 2012.     Thorium: Not ‘green’, not ‘viable’, and not likely


This is a facebook  comment, by a staunch LFTR enthusiast, whose sagacity on matters scientific and, in particular, nuclear is evident from every utterance:   


Robert Steinhaus 

Thorium (dis)information - (Semi-informed Thorium hit-piece from a strong, unshakable, renewables only point of view).

The report is semi-informed, and raises many challenges, economic and technical, to Thorium molten salt technology. While most (all) of the disinformation could be rebutted by a skillfull informed advocate , it would require a fairly lengthly document/presentation to do so. As it stands, all of the document's many claims based on half-informed disinformation and untruths serve to "muddy the water" and introduce fear and uncertainty into public discussion of future nuclear energy planning.

You could try to do a point by point rebuttle of all of the false claims but I am not sure the public would want to read that. Maybe combining a point by point rebuttle document with a public debate might be more effective at dispelling this misinformation.




This is a Claverton Energy piece, and it is obvious that, editorially, they are also vehemently opposed to nuclear energy:     Claverton Energy Article


This is a comment I tried to tack on to the Claverton Energy piece, but it seems to be in suspended animation, awaiting moderation (I fear it will never see the light of day):  


This Briefing just can't get away from continually mentioning the benefits of LFTRs over 'conventional' nuclear - that's PWRs for all of the soon-to-be 'New Nuclear'.

There is tacit acknowledgement of explosion-free operation, impossibility of core meltdowns and minuscule amounts of waste, which decays to background radiation levels in 300 years. Now don't these three benefits pull the rugs from under the vitriolic anti-nukes? And, wouldn't these same facts quell the very doubts, among the public at large, that hold back widespread acceptance of nuclear energy?

In a world of declining hydrocarbon resources, where developing nations will fight (let us hope diplomatically) to improve their standards of living (meaning energy use) and developed nations will fight (ditto) to maintain or improve their standard of living (ditto), it is imbecilic to believe that a spaghetti-like interconnection of windmills and squares of plastic will maintain peace, stability and law and order.

Such conditions could be rushing headlong towards the children of today's young parents. The decision makers of that generation need to appreciate that, in simple arithmetic terms, it is possible for breeder reactors to supply all of the energy needs (including carbon-neutral liquid fuels and ammonia - as feed stock for nitrate fertilisers to feed 9 billion) of every individual on the planet (at developed world standards), until the end of time (from inexhaustible sources of thorium and uranium fuels).

The only conclusion those decision makers will need to reach is - will those reactors be LMFBRs or MSBRs?    Breeder Reactors it is - but will it be---Fast or----Thermal?

All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Thorium Energy - The Weinberg Foundation Breaks Through!

Have just received an email from the Weinberg Foundation, headed:  Safer, cleaner nuclear alternative tops the agenda for new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy

World’s first coalition of cross-party legislators formed to examine thorium-fuelled nuclear power

With the following Information:

The list of founding members of the APPG is as follows:

Officers

Chair: Baroness Worthington (Lab)

Vice-Chair: Dr Julian Huppert MP (Lib Dem)

Treasurer: Lord Lucas of Crudwell (Con)

Members

Lord Clark of Windermere

Mike Crockart, Lib Dem

Tony Cunningham, Labour

Lord Deben, Conservative

Barry Gardiner, Labour

Lord Grantchester, Labour

Viscount Stephen Hanworth, Labour

John Hemming, Lib Dem

Lord Jay, Cross bench

The Rt Reverend Bishop of Hereford, Antony Priddis

Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, Labour

Lord Oxburgh, Cross bench

Baroness Smith, Labour

Lord Stoddart, Independent Labour

Lord Taverne, Lib Dem

Lord Teverson, Lib Dem

James Wharton, Conservative

Heather Wheeler, Conservative

Lord Whitty, Labour

Simon Wright, Lib Dem

Tim Yeo, Conservative

If you have any questions, comments or information for any or all Members of the APPG, you can find email or snail-mail data at:  http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

Please let's give them all the support we can!

Contact your local MP and do your best to persuade them to join!

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.

Global Warming is not a Crisis - Please tell me this is True!!

How people long to be told that Global Warming is not a Crisis. This could not have been demonstrated more forcefully than in a debate called:

Global Warming is not a Crisis - one debate - 3 speakers for the motion - 3 speakers against the motion. Before the debate: the audience poll showed:  30% in favour - 57% against - 13% don't knows. After the debate the polled figures reversed:  46% in favour - 42% against - 12% don't knows. 

Many of those present were obviously swayed by the forcefulness of the protagonists’ emphasis on scientific uncertainty and demonstrated that their earlier opinions, formed from computer models with scary projections, were reactions to the hyperbole of alarmists. The same hyperbole was repeated by those against the motion but, with their palpable feet of clay, there was little conviction in what they had to say.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151 

For LFTRs, the enemy should be atmospheric pollution and particulates from the burning of fossil fuels, which are responsible for 2 million premature deaths per annum. Everyone can agree on such FACTS (more reliable than computer model projections involving unknowable positive feedbacks) and all our endeavours should be aimed at deploying clean energy sources.

See the heading to this Blog to get an instant perspective on the relative environmental degradation caused by energy supplied from - Coal - Uranium - Thorium.

Read All About It: Media Alive with Launch of Weinberg Foundation.

Thorium advocates launch pressure group

Huge optimism for thorium nuclear energy at the launch of the Weinberg Foundation

   Plenty of Comments on the Guardian Blog:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/sep/09/thorium-weinberg-foundation?commentpage=last#end-of-comments  

Here are a couple of mine: 

                  

lftrsuk

10 September 2011 9:29AM

Here's a bit of hyperbole - if the rare earth mines ever stop paying us to take away their 'waste' thorium ore, and we ever run out of ideas of where to get the stuff for next to nothing, we can 'mine' the fly-ash tips from our coal-fired power stations. If you crunch the numbers, at an average of 17 ppm, the energy we could get from the extracted thorium would be 50x greater than that from the original coal. There's enough thorium in our fly-ash tips to provide all of the UK's electrical energy for the next 50 odd years.

Vote for UK manufacture of LFTRs on 38Degrees, the Campaigning Website. If we get enough votes, we can maybe force the Government to put some money into LFTR R & D. We're at about 60th now!!

lftrsuk

    

10 September 2011 12:26PM

If LFTR technology achieves widespread adoption, Alvin Weinberg, the Father of LFTRs, will become the most influential person, in the whole of recorded history, to enhance humankind's progress. Weinberg referred to a Molten Salt Breeder Reactors, or LFTR, as "The Breeder"; no words express the potential of LFTRs more eloquently than his, when he wrote in his essay "Energy as an Ultimate Raw Material, or Burning the Rocks and Burning the Sea": .....I spoke of "Burning the Rocks": the breeder, no less than controlled fusion, is an inexhaustible energy system. Up till then we had thought that breeders, burning 50% instead of 2% of the uranium, extended the energy derivable from fission "only" 25-fold. 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 .....

Continuing in this essay, he doesn't reveal a conspiracy theory - he thinks the human natures of the responsible parties simply keep them on a track to which they are already committed. He wrote: ..... Why didn't the molten-salt system, so elegant and so well thought-out, prevail? I've already given the political reason: that the fast breeder arrived first and was therefore able to consolidate its political position within the AEC. But there was another, more technical reason. The molten-salt technology is entirely different from the technology of any other reactor. To the inexperienced, molten-salt technology is daunting. This certainly seemed to be Milton Shaw's attitude toward molten salts-and he after all was director of reactor development at the AEC during the molten-salt development. Perhaps the moral to be drawn is that a technology that differs too much from an 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, the molten-salt technology will be resurrected .....

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.

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,