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.

What do the UK's Nuclear Experts think?

I am hoping to get a spectrum of views, from a fair few of the UK's nuclear physicists and engineers, to see if there is any cause for optimism or if any avenues of progress reveal themselves to me.

I will see if the following email/letter produces any results:

Dear ,

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs)

I am contacting you to see if you would be kind enough to let me have your views and comments on LFTRs and, in particular, if you think the technology may have future relevance to the UK manufacturing sector.

I am a LFTRs disciple and hosting what I think is the only UK Blog on the subject: LFTRs to Power the Planet (http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/)

I would most appreciate it, if you would spend a few minutes looking at my ‘mechanical engineer’s take’ on LFTR technology, which assumes that a (relatively) cheap R & D programme would get us to, say, a 100 MWe working prototype, and a further modest sum would finance a feasibility study, to design and cost the production line manufacture of such units. All of this could be accomplished in 5 years.

My efforts are directed at the opportunity for UK manufacturing to jump-the-gun in offering the first SMR versions of LFTRs to a potential market for tens of thousands of such units. Manufacture of such ‘chemical engineering plant’ is within the capabilities, capacities and expertise of several UK engineering companies or consortiums and the prospects for growth and jobs in the manufacturing sector is huge.

My hope is that adoption by the developed world will prove irresistible to the developing world, and will make LFTR technology easier to sell than any of the competition.

No other form of energy generation comes anywhere near to offering:

Lowest ecological effect – the mining of 200 tonnes of thorium ore per GWyear.

Sufficient thorium available to last thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, at developed-world usage levels.

Virtually zero environmental impact - no greenhouse gas emissions and only 1 tonne of radiotoxic waste per GWyear (decaying to background radiation levels in 300 years).

Can be configured to ‘burn’ existing radiotoxic waste, including that requiring hundreds of thousands of years of storage.

Cheaper, in terms of capital and running costs, than any other form of electrical generation, SMR units would be affordable by developing world countries and regions (or gifted, on the premiss that increased electrical power usage correlates to reduced birthrate - an essential humanitarian goal).

Load following capability lowers cost, simplifies and improves efficiency of any installation/grid infrastructure.

High temperature waste heat for district heating, to massively improve the efficiency of electricity generating installations.

High temperature heat to create a hydrogen economy, to manufacture carbon-neutral fuels for all transport needs.

High temperature heat to manufacture ammonia, as fertilizer feedstock, to maintain high levels of agricultural production.

High temperature heat for producing potable water from seawater or brackish groundwater.

High temperature heat for industrial processes for the petrochemical industry, heavy oil extraction, etc..

Having no mechanism for expelling radioactive materials into the environment, such as high pressure steam/gas or highly-reactive core materials, no containment structures or exclusion zones are required. The land ‘footprint’, requiring no additional piped or transport infrastructure, is smaller, per GW, than any other form of generation.

SMR versions (say 100 MWe) would allow 10 such units to supply electricity to a city of 1 million people. If ‘sold’ as intrinsically safe, with the necessity for social fairness towards the siting of units, district heating schemes and simplified grid designs are economically attractive and feasible.

To the layman, it is highly likely a consensus can be reached that LFTRs have increased proliferation resistance over other commercial reactors.

Sit at the Feet of the Masters

2 superb and bang-up-to-date articles by Robert Hargraves and Ralph Moir, take you through the history and point to the future prospects for LFTRs.

Please read and digest and forward to as many people as you can:  spread the word

http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/American_Scientist_Hargraves.pdf
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201101/hargraves.cfm

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!

The UK National Strategy for Next-Generation Reactors!

So now we know - We [The British Government] do not have a National Strategy to develop the next-generation [Civil Nuclear Reactor] systems!

See Industrial Apathy Tab