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.           

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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.                                                     ----

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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.

Professor Paul Howarth of NNL puts up the Shutters.

This is my letter to Professor Howarth. I'm not asking a lot, am I? I'm just asking for the NNL to apprise themselves of the latest thinking on LFTRs, before they commit the politicians of the UK to a generation of thorium oblivion: 

                                                                                       

                                                                                         16 July 2011.

National Nuclear Laboratory,
Sellafield,
Seascale,
Cumbria,
CA20 1PG.

For the attention of: Professor Paul Howarth.

Dear Professor Howarth,

07 July 2011, Question from Baroness Smith on Nuclear Reactors:

In his reply, Lord Marland announced that the Secretary of State has asked the National Nuclear Laboratory to prepare a report on the use of thorium in nuclear reactors. He referred to a previous NNL assessment (probably your Position Paper ‘The Thorium Fuel Cycle’ of August 2010), and stated “the risks and resources involved in achieving commercial deployment are significant”.

You will be aware that the Position Paper made no mention of the successful performance of thorium fuel in molten salt reactor operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), under the Directorship of Alvin Weinberg, from 1954 through to 1969. The accompanying ‘Hand-Out’ is one I use, at gatherings discussing energy’s future, and it does carry the ‘Timeline’  to which I refer.

Kirk Sorensen rediscovered the paper archives of the ORNL’s molten salt reactor designs, operations and experimentation and has painstakingly made these available, in PDF format, on his Blog Energy from Thorium. As a taxpaying voter, now retired after 53 years in mechanical engineering, I am more anxious than ever that the taxes taken from my very limited income are spent wisely. Lord Marland clearly demonstrated in his comments, the utter dependence politicians engaged in energy matters have, on expert advice. What you and your colleagues say this time about thorium will dictate the UK’s direction for the foreseeable future.

In my humble opinion, before you reach your conclusions and issue your report, I think you owe it to the tax-paying public to invite Kirk Sorensen over, to present the case for the latter-day molten salt reactor: the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Are you able to do this? Are you willing to do this?

I would most appreciate your early reply, as I believe your report is to be before the Secretary of State, by late summer.

Yours sincerely,

Colin Megson.

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This is Professor Howarth's predictable reply:

Would anyone reading this please put pen to paper and write to Professor Howarth, to try to pursuade him and the NNL to put a bit more effort into UK involvement in the future of LFTR technology?

British Science Festival at Bradford - LFTR Flyer - Handout.

It's a pretty miserable attempt as Sales and Marketing efforts go, but if there are any publicity specialists, amongst LFTR supporters out there, perhaps he/she/they could make a far better Flyer available online, for we other enthusiasts to use. 

Landscape orientation. Print front and back, to make 2 x A5 Flyers.

Any Takers?

Should be good fun to hand these out at local Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth events.

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.

If you are Anti-Nuclear, Non-Scientific and Fearful of Radioactivity - Read this Post

This is most of a paragraph from Wikipedia - Ecological Footprint - with nothing apparently disputed:

"Claims exist that the problems of nuclear waste do not come anywhere close to approaching the problems of fossil fuel waste.^[35][36] A 2004 article from the BBC states: "The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel."^[37] In the U.S. alone, fossil fuel waste kills 20,000 people each year.^[38] A coal power plant releases 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage.^[39] It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident.^[40] In addition, fossil fuel waste causes global warming, which leads to increased deaths from hurricanes, flooding, and other weather events".


If you are still opposed to nuclear power plants being part of the mix, to replace all fossil-fuel power production as soon as possible, study the next paragraph from Wikipedia:


"Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state".

Radioactive Nuclear Waste from LFTRs - There's Almost None!

I failed to spot this 14 June 2011 comment to my 09 January 2011 post, about a couple of excellent articles from two of the foremost LFTR proponents Robert Hargraves and Ralph Moir: 

Anonymous said...

Excellent article; One question: Fig.6 , the decay graphs is hard to reconcile with the 330 years decay to one 10,000th of waste from the LWNR

Similar graphic information is available from:  LPSC. the Laboratory of Subatomic Physics and Cosmology that published this paper, in July 2001: Nuclear Energy With (Almost) No Radioactive Waste. It is a comprehensive analysis of fast/thermal spectrum reactors and solid/liquid fuel reactors. It channels the wide-ranging data to thorium fuelled, thermal Molten Salt Reactors (aka: LFTRs), as producing less, even orders of magnitude less, radiotoxic waste than the others.

The original Homepage is:  http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/gpr/gpr/french/index.htm

The translated Homepage is:  http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Flpsc.in2p3.fr%2Fgpr%2Fgpr%2Ffrench%2Findex.htm



This graph, from the paper, shows that in the 300 to 500 year period, MSR waste is indeed 4 orders of magnitude less radiotoxic than PWR waste. This is the crucial comparison, in respect of the UK's new-build reactor programme.

Adding the line of background radiation level (natural uranium ore) shows when the waste can be regarded as safe:

LFTR actinides are safe after 150 years and the fission products, which are (approximately) common to LFTRs and PWRs are safe after about 500 years. This graph is available from another article by Robert Hargraves and Ralph Moir on an American Physical Society website:  http://aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201101/hargraves.cfm