04/05/2011
Dear Mr Megson,
Thank you for your submission to the Committee’s inquiry on nuclear research and development capabilities.
With regards
Rachel
11 May 2011
30 April 2011
House of Lords, SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Call for Evidence: Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities.
Below is an email I received from Tim Yeo, followed by my last-minute, hurried and faulty response. There is no indication that comments from the Select Committee will be forthcoming, but I will post details, if I do hear anything:
Nuclear energy
From: | (BUCKLEYSA@parliament.uk)  |
| Sent: | 12 April 2011 13:10:39 |
| To: | lftrs@hotmail.co.uk (lftrs@hotmail.co.uk) |
DICTATED BY AND SENT ON BEHALF OF TIM YEO MP:
Dear Mr Megson
Thank you for your e-mail of 21 March which I read with interest.
At present my Committee is not looking specifically at the nuclear industry, but you may be interested to know that the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has recently launched an inquiry into nuclear research and development capabilities. The press notice for this inquiry can be found here:
The deadline for submissions is 28 April. I hope you find this helpful.
I am grateful for your interest in our work.
Yours sincerely
Tim Yeo MP
Chairman, Energy and Climate Change Select Committee
SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Call for Evidence
Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities
In the body of your document you appear to call for suggestions to cope with 7 different problems and, on the basis of the proposals you receive, you will then set about ensuring adequate R D & D capabilities to deliver your selected solutions by 2050.
If I am reading your intentions correctly, then I wish to propose a unique form of nuclear reactor which copes with all 7 problems, thus implying that much of the R D & D can be focused in a fashion which, one could reasonably suppose, would be the quickest and cheapest way of achieving your goals.
The reactor I propose is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), which provides the answers to the problems, in the order you laid them out, as follows:
1. The choice of a LFTR, which is a Molten Salt Reactor, will deliver a Gen. IV reactor.
2. Since LFTRs are fuelled by the thorium 232 isotope (Th 232) and natural thorium is 100% Th 232, the increasing demand for uranium, as the worldwide demand for PWRs escalates, is sidestepped. Bear in mind that natural thorium (containing 100% Th 232) is 3½ times more abundant than natural uranium (containing 0.7% fissile U 235 – hence the need for massively expensive enrichment plant). Also thorium is a throw-away by-product of rare-earth mining and, in some countries, safe disposal of thorium bearing rock has to be paid for. There is sufficient thorium available to supply the total energy requirements (including carbon-neutral fuels, from atmospheric CO2, for all form of transport and ammonia feed-stock, from atmospheric nitrogen, for nitrate fertilizers).
3. LFTRs are far more proliferation resistant the PWRs, since fertile Th 232 breeds to the fissile U 233 fuel, but the U 233 is always accompanied by a tiny proportion of the highly dangerous isotope U 232. This isotope emits hard gamma rays which endanger the lives of personnel and destroy electronics and other associated equipment.
4. LFTRs are thermal spectrum reactors and burn up 100% of the thorium fuel – it is a closed fuel cycle and therefore obviates the need for recycling of fuel. Bearing in mind that PWRs operating on the U – Pu open fuel cycle only burn up a few percent of the fissile fuel, before removal of fuel assemblies is necessary, a LFTR power plant can deliver some 300 times more electricity (and/or process heat) per kg of fuel, than an equivalent PWR.
5. LFTRs generally require a start-up ‘charge’ of U 233, but this can be replaced wholly or partly by Pu 239 and so, instead of producing Pu 239 (as happens in a PWR), a LFTR can burn-up Pu 239 and thus eliminate the problem of long term storage of plutonium. LFTRs do not produce any transuranics and the fission products contained in the spent fuel have worst-case half-lives of 30 years, requiring storage for 300 years, to decay to background radiation levels. Such waste can have a guarantee of safe storage, at a tiny fraction of the cost of storing PWR waste.
6. The ubiquity of thorium guarantees safe and secure fuel supply. Alvin M. Weinberg, one of the inventors and patent holders of the Light Water Reactor (LWR), championed LFTR research and operation in the 60s and 70s as Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), talked about ‘mining the rocks’. The implication being that any cubic metre of the Earth’s crust could be cost-effectively mined, for the energy content of its thorium.
7. The safe and secure disposal of spent fuel is covered in 5, above. Also of great significance, is the greatly reduced quantity of waste produced by a LFTR, in comparison to a PWR. To produce 1 GWyear of electricity, a PWR will consume 30 tonnes of LEU or MOX fuel and produce 30 tonnes of spent fuel, which may invoke the expense of reprocessing. By contrast, a LFTR produces the same 1 GWyear of electricity, using only 1 tonne of fuel and producing 1 tonne of cheaply stored waste.
There is so much more to be said about the benefits of LFTRs over and above those of PWRs, in terms of delivering high temperature process heat, to develop a widespread hydrogen economy and Combined Heating and Power (CHP) systems. In terms of safety, LFTRs are several orders of magnitude safer than PWRs, because they have no high-pressure ‘driver’ to expel radiotoxic substances into the environment. And, the fluoride salts are very stable and of low reactivity, unlike, for example, liquid sodium. In terms of cost, because LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure, they do not require a thick-wall pressure vessel to contain the core and therefore, no outer containment building; you could run by a LFTR and know it’s not a fraction of the cost of an equivalent PWR.
I would like to suggest to the Committee that they invite Kirk Sorensen, the world’s leading authority on LFTRs, over from the USA, to give a presentation on LFTRs to your nuclear advisors.
Kirk blogs on: http://energyfromthorium.com/
I blog on: http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Colin Megson.
07 April 2011
Sir John Beddington thinks: Forget it! There'll be no LFTRs in the UK....It's too risky!...It's too expensive!
The following is an extract from a DECC email reply, to an enquiry from a gentleman, pointing out LFTR interest in a Daily Telegraph Blog on Nuclear Power:
The Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, with input from the shadow Nuclear Centre of Excellence and others, recently coordinated an assessment of the prospects for research into advanced thorium reactors.......
The conclusion was that, whilst the science is reasonably sound, developing reactors based on a thorium fuel cycle would carry major technological and commercial risks. The resources required to develop these technologies to the point at which they might be deployed successfully at a commercial scale are also significant.
Daily Telegraph 23 January 2010:
Wind farm subsidies top £1 billion a year
Britain's energy policy faces new controversy as it can be revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise windfarms and other forms of renewable energy.
The cold weather has been accompanied by high pressure and a lack of wind, which meant that only 0.2pc of a possible 5pc of the UK's energy was generated by wind turbines over the last few days.
Yes, playing safe politics will keep us in power lads! Keep telling the people what Green Parties we are and keep the subsidies flowing into renewables (whisper, whisper - even though we know they're completely useless!). How many votes would we get sticking £300 million into the first-of-a-kind LFTR - not a lot - we'd have Greenpeace and the rest of those screaming anti-nukes at our throats!
Sir John says it'll be a bit tricky and a bit expensive - we can just tell the media that's the best advice and we've no need to stick our necks out!
21 March 2011
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.
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.
18 March 2011
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.
04 February 2011
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.
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.
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