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.

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,

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

A Virgin Rebirth - Polluter to Environmentalist

I've just posted the 'Comment' below on 'Richard's Blog' to test the 'Carbon Credentials' of the paradox that is Sir Richard Branson. I strongly suspect I will not hear a dickey bird from Sir Richard, but: What's to lose?

Dear Sir Richard,

"The idea should be simple - simple enough for an individual to turn it into reality

I have just emailed a proposal to Virgin Green Fund, regarding the financing of the development of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs), which are capable of delivering clean (emission-free), safe, cheap, electrical energy to everyone on the planet, forever (from inexhaustible thorium fuel). This profusion of clean electricity production will power the creation of a hydrogen economy along with the manufacture of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, for all of our transport energy (including aviation).

I host the only UK Blog on these reactors, 'LFTRs to Power the Planet' (Google: lftrs - and it's about the third down) and I shall be posting my Proposal action and its outcome which, for the sake of UK jobs, growth and prosperity, I hope is successful. I am linked to several USA blogs, where activity on LFTRs is pronounced and if they are the first to take LFTR development by the horns, the UK will be left trailing in their wake.

I have suggested in the proposal to the team, that it is difficult to think of an individual (that is, somebody famous), more fitting than you, who might wear the crown of 'The World's Worst Polluter', but your efforts to try to do something about fossil fuel pollution are more than noteworthy. However, if you were to support LFTR development, it would place you well ahead of Mr. Bill Gates KBE (who's championing of the 'Travelling Wave Reactor' will surely prove inconsequential) in the 'World's Best Environmentalist' competition.

Regards,

I sent the Proposal below to the 'Virgin Greenfund Team' (See them in action on: http://www.virgingreenfund.com/team ); (See the companies signed up on: http://www.virgingreenfund.com/companies/list ):

PROPOSAL TO VIRGIN GREEN FUND, 09 October 2010.

Dear Sirs,

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs)

I host the only UK blog, 'LFTRs to Power the Planet' (Google: lftrs and it's about the third down) to promote their 'Sustainable Energy' quality.

LFTRs can supply cheap, safe, clean energy to everyone on the planet forever (See 03 October 2010 posting: 'Oh Ye of Little Faith').

My Business Plan is detailed under the 'Science Apathy' tab, in Paragraph 6 of the posting headed: PHYSICS WORLD NUCLEAR POWER THE ROAD AHEAD.

Mr. Bill Gates KBE has invested in a privately funded research company, Terra Power, to develop a Travelling Wave Reactor. Mr. Gates sees nuclear energy as the way forward, but Sir Richard Branson can do more than his share in this regard, by ensuring the UK development of LFTRs, according to my business plan. I'm sure you gentlemen are aware, with your deep sector knowledge and expertise, that LFTRs perform exactly the same function as Travelling Wave Reactors, but produce their energy from the inexhaustible fuel source, thorium and not from problematic uranium.

While Mr. Gates KBE can be loosely, but personally linked with the detrimental environmental effects of worldwide PC manufacture and use, there is possibly no other business celebrity like Sir Richard Branson, who can be associated, as an individual, with the title 'The World's Worst Polluter'; somebody has to wear the crown! Do you think you could ask Sir Richard if, in the rarified atmosphere of the business circles in which he operates,he knows of anyone else who might challenge for 'The Title'?

I'm sure Sir Richard Branson is more concerned about humankind's future than most of us, and I'm sure he ponders the 'protection value of wealth', when considering the 'Limits of Growth' predictions of Professor Dennis Meadows, showing that by 2050, population will increase by nearly one third, but food production will be half what it is now? Could your 'OUR COMPANIES' page, add a 'Sustainable Energy' category to accomaodate LFTRs, should my application be acceptable? Without being disrespectful, I'm sure you would acknowledge that the contribution LFTRs could make to 'Cooling global warming' would dwarf your other companies' contributions.

In my Blog, I shall be posting my efforts, documenting my proposal, and await with interest, your response.

Regards,