MORE POTABLE WATER - AS IMPORTANT AS - LESS CO2

A letter to Mr. Loïc Fauchon, President of the World Water Council:

Dear Mr. Fauchon,


At the recent meeting of President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron, they said:  ".....As two of the world’s wealthiest nations, we embrace our responsibility as leaders in the development that enables people to live in dignity, health and prosperity....." 

 
When you launched the 6th World Water Forum this week, you succinctly described what needs to be provided for 'people to live in dignity, health and prosperity', when you said ".....first and foremost, energy and water so they can finally pull themselves out of poverty....." 
 
The developing world is now and will be, for a couple of decades to come, spending £billions or maybe even £trillions on coal fired power stations. And who can blame them, with 40,000 people per day dying from preventable diseases, for the sake of affordable energy and potable water? 
 
Coal fired power stations use and contaminate vast volumes of fresh water to cool the waste heat from the steam turbines used to generate electricity. This heat, which contains nearly two thirds of the heat from the coal, is truly wasted. 
 
In the 50s and 60s, whilst the UK trod a path to a nuclear technology dead end, the US Administration withdrew funding to technological development of Molten Salt Breeder Reactors (MSBRs) in what is surely the 'Saddest Accident of History'. See:   http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/2012/03/follow-up-to-i...  . 
 
MSBRs, now known as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs), use gas turbines to drive the electrical generators and the 'waste' heat from these (just over half of what the reactor produces) is at a high enough temperature to desalinate water. So, nothing is 'wasted'; huge volumes of potable water can be produces from brackish ground water or sea water - and the running (energy) costs are next to nothing. 
 
Can your Organisation communicate this information to the  Heads of State of the developing world, to create an opportunity for them to urgently debate this issue? Getting the first-of-a-kind LFTR up and running, for a minuscule amount of money will get investment stimulated to the point that venture capitalists and fund managers should be knocking the door down to get into the most essential technology of the 21st Century. 
 
In the days of slide rules and compasses, when all machining and planning was done manually, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) was funded in 1960, switched on in 1965 and ran for many thousands of full power hours until 1969. The MSRE was two thirds of what a LFTR is, so in these days of CAD/CAM, computerised 3D modelling and planning, with the right will, a LFTR could be ready for action in 5 years. Within not much more than a decade, we could have factory built, transportable modular units coming off production lines. Their safety is inherent, their 'greenness' unrivaled and their affordability half that of equivalent, conventional nuclear power plant. See:  http://lftrsuk.blogspot.com/p/benefits-of-lftrs.ht...

And, incidentally, LFTRs emit no CO2 or other greenhouse gasses, so political Nirvana awaits developing world politicians, who can not only satisfy their own National needs, but reap the benefits forthcoming from the grateful communities of the developed world, stupefied by fears of global warming.

In hoping you can help and take some action, I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Colin Megson.  

 

"China will.....put an end to..." - Renewables!

 

If China is getting out of renewables, will the rest of the world follow? At long last, instead of pouring money down the drain for every intermittent kWh these hyped-up technologies produce, will they be relegated to their natural place in the order of things - powering remote rural communities and making up a low single figure % of total energy produced?  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/13/1074145/-China-s-Energy-Future-Less-Solar-and-Wind-More-Nuclear-and-Hydro 

The Follow Up to 'A is for Atom': 'The Saddest Accident of History'

Dear Mr. Curtis,

Someone, and I hope it will be you, has to tell the general public that Alvin Weinberg, who features in  your 'A for Atom' film , may be the most important individual in recorded history to beneficially influence the wellbeing of humankind. Such would be the result of the widespread deployment of a uniquely safe and affordable type of nuclear reactor, he developed during his time as Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

In the saddest accident of history, Alvin Weinberg, who designed and patented Light Water Reactors (LWRs), was removed from his Directorship of  ORNL (1953 - 1971) because of his opposition, on the grounds of safety, to using LWRs for civil power generation. He predicted the loss-of-coolant accidents and core meltdowns that were witnessed at Three Mile Island and Fukushima-Diiachi.


In Alvin Weinberg, we are not talking about an 'ordinary' scientist or human being; this man worked on the Manhattan Project with Nobel Laureates such as Fermi, Seaborg and Wigner and in 1980 he won The Enrico Fermi Award  -  an award honouring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. This man's views on the way forward for energy need to be taken to heart by the general public, politicians, scientists, technologists and the media.


In his autobiography, Weinberg dreamed of an Energy-Utopia for humankind, brought about by the Breeder Reactor, when he said:  ""…..I spoke of "Burning the Rocks": the breeder, no less than controlled fusion, is an inexhaustible energy system........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……""

When Weinberg talked about the 'breeder' he was talking about breeding the fertile Thorium232 fuel to fissile Uranium233 in a thermal spectrum Molten Salt Reactor (MSR), which he had developed at ORNL. His Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was given the go-ahead in 1960, in the days of slide-rules, tee-squares and manual machine tools; it was 'switched on' in 1965 and ran as a working reactor for many thousands of full-power hours, until 1969. At the stage when a follow-up, commercial sized 60 MWe reactor design was being finalised, Weinberg got his marching orders because of his vociferous opposition to the use of LWRs for civil purposes. Work on MSRs virtually ceased and over the next few decades, the equipment and personnel 'evaporated'; all that remained was a paperwork archive. The technology with the potential to give hope for a brighter future was compacted into the corner of a room and covered in dust for 30 years, until its rediscovery in 2000.

Widespread deployment of LFTRs means affordable, clean energy for everyone, forever. If that now 40 year delay in the introduction of this technology is not the saddest accident of history, I don't know what is.

The story needs to be told on mainstream TV for the technology to have any chance of taking hold in the mind of the public at large; this has to be the best chance of getting anything moving quickly into the political arena. Are you prepared to give such a documentary project your serious consideration?

Regards,

Colin Megson.

Weinberg's sagacity shines at 17:45 and 36:06:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS01DaQUu3g 

WATER, WATER EVERY WHERE, NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK

Countries and Regions of the developing world will be spending untold £billions on coal fired power stations, which need to be sited near huge bodies of water to deal with the useless waste heat from their steam turbines. Inefficient transmission lines are needed to get electricity to arid regions and then the electricity can be used to desalinate brackish ground water or sea water. The overall efficiency of such complexity might just be 10%, but it could be much less.

I had to comment on this Report:   http://www.euractiv.com/specialreport-waterpolicy/water-sanitation-opportunity-donors-analysis-511318#comment-3014   and as I did so, I though what a piddling amount the £300 million is, to get the first-of-a-kind LFTR built, which offers the prospect of getting potable water for next to nothing!

If only the heads of the Heads of States could get together, to begin to appreciate the enormity of the economic value, as well as the environmental value of kick-starting a LFTR manufacturing programme.

Is there an individual politician, technocrat, business man or organisation out there who can drive this message home, to those Nations and Regions that can benefit so much?

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!

"....we care about their plight and we want them to join one world...."

David Cameron says to the poorest people in the world "....we care about their plight...." ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13572427 )

UK Official Developmen­t Assistance in 2010 is estimated at £8,354 million. Were the UK to build the first-of-a­-kind Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), it would cost a piddling £300 million. This uniquely safe type of nuclear reactor can generate electrical power cheaper than coal, is free of greenhouse gas emissions and is affordable to developing nations and regions. This move would kick-start investment in the production­-line manufactur­e of transporta­ble modular reactors, capable of rapid deployment­.

If the developed world, where ¼ of humanity uses ¾ of the energy produced, is not prepared to make this technology available to the ¾ of humanity surviving on the remaining ¼ of the energy, then let it reap the polluting whirlwind of huge increases in the burning of fossil fuels. All power to those in the developing world, in their dash for affordable energy from fossil fuel; who, in their right mind, would not want to mitigate 40,000 deaths per day from preventabl­e causes, in the most expedient way possible.

'In Our Time' and Tom Morris - Where are you, when you're needed most?

I stumbled across this old 'plea' of mine from 10 months ago, trying to get Tom Morris to 'do' the story of Wigner, Weinberg and MSRs. I believe now, as I did then, that an IOT programme in which Melvyn Bragg could describe and develop 'the saddest accident of history' would make one of the most memorable IOT programmes ever; it would reveal facts of 20th Century history never previously presented to BBC listeners (or viewers).

Dear Tom Morris,

Suggestions for future In Our Time Programmes.

May I suggest a subject which is paradoxical in the extreme? I speak of a 50 year old, proven technology which can solve many of the worst problems facing humankind, including the cessation of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses emissions and mitigation of population growth.

Experimentation into this technology in the USA, in the early 1950s, revealed that it was militarily ineffective and thereafter, research and development was done on shoestring financing, with low-key attention to the enormity of the potential benefits in the civilian sphere. Even though operational units were producing results which gave rise to great optimism, all work ceased in the early 70’s and all that remained was a paper archive, recording what had been achieved and what the future could hold.

This paper goldmine gathered dust for 30 years, when it was unearthed by an Indiana Jones figure, who poured over every word and discovered a story of political/military in-fighting. The winners went on to give us the world we have today and the losers lost the opportunity to have prevented the past 50 years of escalating greenhouse gasses emissions.

Within the past month, the Chinese have announced their intentions to pursue this technology through a programme of manufacture, and claim all of the associated intellectual property. In the UK, the economics of meeting our future energy needs and carbon targets by using this technology, could be so compelling that we might well be importing Chinese-made units by the container ship full, within a couple of decades.

I’m absolutely convinced this subject would be a perfect topic for In Our Time, with Kirk (Indiana) Sorensen being able to describe the rediscovery of the work done by Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and their dedication to the promotion of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).

With sufficient thorium available to fuel the energy needs of everyone on the planet for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years, at developed-world standards, LFTRs effectively give us all of the benefits of energy from fusion now. The effect LFTRs can have on the future of humankind is immeasurable and hardly anyone knows about it. In Our Time revelations would go a long way to remedying this.

Regards,

Colin Megson.