Currently more than 80 percent of the world's energy is obtained from fossil fuels: petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Another 10 percent comes from biomass and waste, leaving only 10 percent from sources other than carbon burning.
According to the World Health Organization, urban outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause 1.3 million deaths worldwide per year, from respiratory infections, heat disease, and lung cancer. Indoor air pollution is estimated to cause approximately 2 million premature deaths mostly in developing countries. Almost half of these deaths are due to pneumonia in children under 5 years of age. The source in both cases is carbon combustion, from fossil fuels or biomass.
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that the greenhouse gases generated by human carbon combustion are likely to trigger disastrous global climate change in the decades ahead. Even those who deny this surely must admit that the world would be a better place if we could find an economically feasible and safe alternative to the use of carbon combustion as our primary source of energy.
And so, it came as a surprise to me to learn recently that such an alternative has been available to us since World War II, but not pursued because it lacked weapons applications. When the war ended and nuclear reactors were developed to generate electrical power, the designs adopted were based on the same technologies that were used in the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. These relied on the fission of uranium-235 (U-235) and plutonium-239 (Pu-239).
U-235 constitutes only 0.72 percent of natural uranium, which is mostly U-238, so costly separation is required. Plutonium is not found in nature and must be "bred" by uranium reactors, also a costly process.
It was well known to physicists of the time that another uranium isotope, U-233, is also fissionable. This isotope also does not occur in nature, but can be bred from the element, thorium, which is very common. However, a reactor breeding U-233 also produces U-232, which has a decay chain that generates high-energy gamma rays. This makes U-233 fusion unusable as a weapon, since these gamma rays are very destructive to a bomb's instrumentation and dangerous to the personnel handling it. Furthermore, U-233 is not an efficient breeder of plutonium, since it contains two fewer neutrons than U-235.
Because of its lack of application to weapons, a promising project at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that was leading toward a thorium reactor was cancelled by the Nixon administration in 1969 in favor of a more efficient plutonium breeder. The Oak Ridge program was advancing the technology of using molten salt as a reactor fuel rather than the solid rods found in existing naval and commercial reactors. It had successfully operated such a reactor for 22,000 hours before being terminated. Liquid fuel offers great advantages in cost and safety over the solid fuel design.
Currently the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is having a resurgence of interest worldwide. Let me list the advantages of an electrical power plant based on LFTR compared to conventional nuclear and fossil-fuel plants:
• Thorium is plentiful and inexpensive. One ton costing $300,000 can power a 1,000-megawatt plant for a year. One pound of thorium yields as much power as 300 pounds of uranium or 3.5 million tons of coal.
• Unlike conventional high-pressure water reactors, LTFR operates at atmospheric pressure, obviating the need for a large, expensive containment dome and having little danger of explosion.
• LFTRs cannot melt down since the normal operating state is already molten.
• LFTRs are stable to rising temperatures since salt expands slowing the reaction. A salt plug kept solid by cooling coils will automatically melt if external power is lost and the fluid drain out to a safe dump tank.
• Salts used are solid below 300 F or higher, so any spilled fuel solidifies instead of escaping into the environment.
• Liquid fuels use almost all the available energy is used, unlike solid fuels that must be removed before they have generated 1-3 percent of the available energy because of damage.
• The radiative waste is much less than from conventional plants and far more manageable.
• Air-cooling possible where water is scarce.
• Should be cheaper than coal, especially if CO2 is sequestered.
• Proliferation resistant. Can't use to build bombs.
• Smaller size and lower cost.
• Could provide the world's energy needs carbon-free for a thousand years.
The gamma rays from U-232 are not a problem for reactors since unlike nuclear weapons they are already sufficiently shielded.
Of course, the disasters at Three-Mile-Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima has greatly chilled public acceptance of nuclear power. But if these plants had used LFTRs, no radiation would have escaped to the environment.
Although far less of a problem than U-235 and Pu-239, waste from U-233 still has to be stored someplace. Here a comparison can be made with carbon sequestration in which waste CO2 is pumped into the ground, which is being talked about as a solution to problem of coal pollution. The amount of underground space needed to store a year's CO2 output from a single coal power plant is equivalent to 600 football fields filled to a height of ten yards. By comparison, one football field filled to the same height is required for all the waste from the entire civilian nuclear program.
Work on LFTR is going on worldwide, with research being done in China, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Canada, and the Netherlands. The only significant U.S. research is on molten salt reactors, but with no emphasis on thorium. The U.S. may end up buying LFTRs from China. Perhaps WalMart will sell them cheap.
Thanks to reactor physicist Bob Zannelli for bringing LFTR to my attention and helping me learn the science.
Further Reading:
World Health Organization, "Air Quality and Health: Fact Sheet No. 313".
Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World, (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
Robert Hargraves, and Ralph Moir, "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors: An Old Idea in Nuclear Power Gets Reexamined," American Scientist 98, no. 4(2010): 304-13.
Robert Hargraves, and Ralph Moir, "Liquid Fuel Nuclear Reactors," Physics & Society 40, no. 1(2011): 6-10.
Also, see the online lecture by Robert Hargraves "Aim High: Using Thorium to Address Environmental Problems".
I add a comment to this observation by the poster: "U-233 is not an efficient breeder of plutonium".
Indeed, the LFTR hardly produces any plutonium-239 (used in nuclear weapons), but it can produce Plutonium-238, which has no use in nuclear weapons but it is extremely valuable for space exploration; all the spacecrafts (Voyager, Galileo, etc) sent beyond the asteroid belt are powered by Pu-238.
Now the production of Pu-238 was very difficult, dirty, and very expensive with the current nuclear technology, and it has been stopped years ago; so, our stock of Pu-238 is almost exhausted and cannot support NASA's future missions.
Now, to produce a good quantity of Pu-238 (say, 15 Kg per year), we would need a LFTR started on 1000 Kg of Uranium-233; and luckily we have already 1000 Kg of U-233 as it was stockpiled by the ORNL in the 60s (before the Molten Salt Reactor was killed by the Nixon administration).
Except that (everything related to the MSR/LFTR is incredible!) that there are DOE plans to destroy this material!
To know more, see a remarkable video (on space and advanced cancer research) by Kirk Sorensen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdusXIvyLFQ
(Translations in other languages are being added in youtube)
I just saw these two videos on the topic in this article and was incredibly impressed:
A) http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html
This vid is about 10 minutes and is an easily digestible introduction to this topic.
B) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
This vid is much longer (about 2 hours) but contains an amazing about of info on this topic.
To learn more, I highly recommend checking out this website:
http://energyfromthorium.com/
With that, I invite to you explore this topic further. ESPECIALLY if you care about the issue of a developing a viable sustainable energy economy in the US.
Thanks for listening.
The Tightwire Guy
"....2.1 Technology Basis
MSRs were first proposed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) shortly after World War II as a means to power military aircraft as part of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program and for civilian nuclear power. Two thermal-spectrum reactors were developed and operated at ORNL, the 2.5 MW(t) Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and the 8 MW(t) Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), which operated from 1965 to1969 with over 13,000 full-power hours of operation. A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT WAS PERFORMED ON MSRs OVER THREE DECADES, with progressive development of more advanced reactor concepts enabled through fundamental research on salt chemistry and high-temperature materials. The work was focused on development of a thermal-spectrum breeder based on the >>232Th/233U
This article pretends like opposing arguments do not so much as exist.
This article pretends like everything is absolutely perfect.
Good article.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html
At least you have given up on LWRs.
Solar is already cheaper at 16 cents per KWH or less, and in 10 years will be 5 cents? in 30 years 1 cent?. Same for wind, and waste bio char, and plug in hybrids, and that's enough for 90%+ of our energy and complete replacement and decommissioning of all nukes and coal.
and other really clean techs perhaps desert algae, underwater turbine.
For less than nukes and safer, we could install a world superconducting grid backbone, then solar could provide all our power 24/7. Somewhere on the planet, the wind blows and the sun shines.
http://www.gizmag.com/sahara-solar-breeder-project/17054/
A closed fuel cycle has nothing to do with the viability of LFTR. There are "once through" designs which are simpler and intended to only burn conventional fuel and existing waste. These simpler designs offer all of the safely features and cost advantages of LFTR.
The "once through" or open fuel cycle LFTR designs I mentioned don't use thorium. I said they use waste and conventional fuel. Can you understand what you read or are you just lazy?
Genders, I and others have told you repeatedly that your silly PSR document is NOT ABOUT LFTR. I would be embarrassed if I were you.
The Earth Mother is sending a message and GIFT.
REE(Rare Earth Elements) so necessary for all those
wonderful Earth Friendly Technologies: wind mills, electric
cars, high tech gizmos, etc. are buried in mounds of Thorium!
Thorium the fuel used in Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).
Thorium is radioactive and is required to be handles and stored as
a hazardous waste. These procedures are costly to the companies
mining Rees. There is proposal designating Thorium as a Nuclear Fuel
and giving relief to the REE companies.
http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/press-releases/markey-introduces-long-awaited-1872-mining-reform-measures-85899366609
“The Fair Payment for Energy and Mineral Production on Public Lands Act of 2011 responds to these issues by setting a royalty equal to what other industries have been paying for decades. …………..”
…………..“The Abandoned Mines Reclamation and Deficit Reduction Act would start to address the estimated 500,000 abandoned mines on public lands.”…………
“The mining of gold, uranium, and other hardrock minerals is still governed by a law signed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. This statute gives mining companies “free and open access” to the majority of public land in the West, and in 2010 alone it allowed at least $2.4 billion in valuable metals to be taken from public land without taxpayer compensation, according to the House Natural Resources Committee’s correspondence
Try reading this: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSRintro.pdf
Or this: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSREexperience.pdf
They were ready to build one at the dawn of the 70's. But apparently, according to you, since the program was shut down (due to political reasons, not technology issues) we should scrap it because it hasn't been built yet.
Your opinion is vapourware.
It shows there is a public health crisis due to carbon issues and LFTRs should be
pursued as a remedy. I believe we need to develop LFTR for no other reason than
the consumption of nuclear waste if these other benefits are within reach then les do it.
Don't look but there weren't any airplanes, iphones, tvs and many other items we take
for granted a hundred years ago so saying there isn't not one now is no reason not to
DO IT, LFTR NOW in the USA
http://english.cas.cn/Ne/CASE/201102/t20110209_64985.shtml
"As a first step towards realizing its dream of developing clean nuclear energy, the Academy also launched plans of developing a thorium-fueled molten-salt nuclear reactor, which when functional will be a precious alternative safe fuel source. As Richard Martin writes in Wired magazine, "Designing a thorium-based molten-salt reactor could place China at the forefront of the race to build environmentally safe, cost-effective and politically palatable reactors."
"
When someone actually has a commercially viable one designed, built, tested, and generating electricity in the real world, please let me know. Otherwise this just qualifies as another of the nuclear industry's many attempts at 'energy to cheap to meter" fantasies.
Excerpt:The broadest and perhaps most important conclusion from the MSRE experience is that this was quite a practical reactor. It ran for long periods of time, yielding valuable information, and when maintenance was required it was accomplished safely and without excessive delay.† The remarkable performance of the MSRE clearly shows that with proper design and careful construction and operation, the unusual features of an MSR in no way compromise its safety and dependability.
http://energyfromthorium.com/2006/06/22/1972-summary-of-ornl-fluoride-reactor-evolution/
Thorium is nothing more than vaporware - a lot of bunk.
Confessions of a Nuke: A Book Review
Alvin M. Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer, American Institute of Physics, NY, 1994.
By Alex Zucker
“But the devil is in the details. Fermi saw a problem as early as the Chicago days. In the book, Weinberg quotes him as saying, "It is not clear that the public will accept a source of energy that produces so much radioactivity or that might be subject to diversion of bomb material by terrorists." As in so many other cases, Fermi turns out to be right. Perhaps nuclear energy was developed too rapidly. Because of the pressing need for a nuclear navy, reactors became an article of commerce before engineers could examine in depth such issues as nuclear waste, reactor safety, fuel reprocessing, and the economics of energy production and use. Weinberg points out that the choice of the light-water reactor system was really driven by the naval reactor programs, and that other systems, and there are plenty of them, never had a chance. In their euphoria, reactor entrepreneurs forgot Fermi's warning. "During my years at ORNL," Weinberg says, "I paid too little attention to the waste problem. Designing and building reactors, not nuclear waste, was what turned me on . . . had I to do it over again, it would be to elevate waste disposal to the very top of ORNL's agenda."“
At least he put a man on the moon. Or didn't he?
:-)
rooftop solar, offshore wind and waste bio char bio fuels can supply more then 100% of our needs in less time than that.
LFTR still produces thousand year waste, proliferation tech, and world disaster from "criticality events"
And that's IF IT WORKS.
The cost goes up many times when you deal with the real problems.
http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-8-msr-lftr/8-4-the-isotope-separation-plant/
great critique of LFTR an nuke power in general
or identity. Anonymous blogs don't count. Dr James Hansen and Dr Alvin Weinberg are
recognized. daryanenergyblog is a WHODUNNIT???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74hVvQ
WEAK
Don't Take it personal, Friend. Dr. Weinberg directed the National Labs to research
alternative energy tech, way back in the 1960s.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbg.htm
Under Weinberg's leadership, the first big ecology project in the United States was started in 1970 at ORNL as the National Science Foundation-Research Applied to National Needs Environmental Program. Rose was the first director; when he left, his successor was physicist Jack Gibbons, now President Clinton's science adviser. Concerning this program, Gibbons has said, "We were ahead of our time."
"The exciting activity that Alvin stimulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s transformed the Laboratory," Fulkerson said. "Now, a quarter of a century later, another Alvin--Alvin Trivelpiece--suggested to the Galvin Commission that the new mission for the national labs should be sustainable development in the areas of the three E's--energy, the environment, and the economy."
"rooftop solar, offshore wind and waste bio char bio fuels can supply more then 100% of our needs"
This is what a scientist has to say (in a peer-reviewed journal). "Could nuclear fission energy, etc., solve the greenhouse problem? The affirmative case" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511009189 ). The title was carefully chosen to match a previously published paper: "Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510002004). Both scientists are asking: How can we wean ourselves of the use of fossil fuels without damaging economic progress? My reading of both papers is that renewables have a role to pay. The second scientists says (these are my words) "it can't be done with renewables alone", the first says (again, my words) "but we could do it, provided nuclear power makes a contribution of roughly 50%".
Now who should I believe, a man with a mantra or two scientists who have prepared fact-based analyses?
Efficiency, rooftop solar, offshore wind, 50Mile commuter plug in hybrids and waste bio char bio fuels.
This combination is ready to replace fossil and nukes in 7-15 years at it's recent growth rates, 24/7 using the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, forever, plentiful enough for all the expected 9B peak population to enjoy an efficient version of the first world energy quality of life. Solar cheaper than nukes around 16 cents, wind and waste half that, and inefficiency half that again.
attack that.
Nuclear power is carbon positive.
Waste bio char is carbon negative, the only massively carbon negative tech we have.
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/biochar-alone-could-offset-12-of-all-human-greenhouse-gas-emissions-study.html
I have provided plenty of proof of the numbers I use. attack a specif number. A specific fact.
I've yet to hear a single nuclear power opponent tell us what we're supposed to do with all that nuclear "waste" lying around, beside foisting it off on future generations. LFTR and/or IFR offer a way to put that "waste" and plutonium to beneficial use while safely and efficiently operating according to the immutable laws of physics.
I don't think this is entirely accurate, but I see your point.
It's a perfect storm of obstruction.
I prefer not to trust these people who feel its alright to commit our grandkids' grandkids and many more future generations to paying for our energy today - the lack of morals and ethics is outrageous. Thorium radioactive waste is still prevalent.
Finally, I also find it strange that the writer of this article did not mention the fact that India has spent enormous amounts of time (over 50 years) and taxpayer money to develop a thorium reactor. The result has been an abject failure which is widely considered to be a huge waste of money. India is now pursuing other energy options since thorium is not viable.
Well, Mr. Meyerson, perhaps you should re-read the article and ignore the anti-nuke propaganda you've been reading. India's thorium program has nothing in common with the LFTR reactor which is the topic of this article. They are two entirely different technologies that happen to have their use of thorium in common.
If you understood the LFTR article you would realize that the advantages of this design have very little to do with the thorium fuel. In fact LFTR reactors can be fueled by LEU uranium or waste from conventional LWR reactors.
By then even the most expensive solar PV will be far cheaper than any form of nuclear.
Liquid fuel changes everything. It is a completely different approach.
poison your neighbors or the grand kids.
Dr James Hansen proposes using $25B Nuclear Waste Fund in accelerating
deployment of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor(LFTR) reactors.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf
Lets do this the Real ole fashioned American way.
Use American R&D Tech Dr Alvin Weinberg engineered at Oak Ridge
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors and the http://www.coal2nuclear.com/
proposed designs to modify coal burners for an All American clean energy
TOUCHDOWN.
“....burning coal at the average 1GWe power plant produces about 13 tons of thorium per year. that thorium is recoverable from the power plant’s waste ash pile.
one ton of thorium will produce nearly 1 GW of electricity for a year in an efficient thorium cycle reactor. Thus CURRENT COAL ENERGY TECHNOLOGY THROWS
AWAY OVER TEN TIMES THE ENERGY IT PRODUCES AS ELECTRICITY.
This is not the result of poor thermodynamic efficiency; it is the result of a failure to recognize and use the energy value of thorium. The amount of thorium present in surface mining coal waste is enormous and would provide all the power human society needs for thousands of years, without resorting to any special mining for thorium, or the use of any other form or energy recovery.”
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971
10-20 year away, still highly radioactive waste deadly for 1000's of years, still teaches bomb making.
Nukes are good for bombs, military ships, medicine, and testing. NOT energy.
Maybe IF the sun shines and MAYBE IF the wind BLOWS????Lets hope!!!!!!
As usual you are criticizing LWR not LFTR.
The LWR "nuclear waste" {LFTR Fuel} is the reason LFTR must be deployed
to consume the LWR "nuclear waste" {LFTR Fuel} to eliminate the real waste of
needing "Yucca Mountain" type storage for 10,000 years.
You seem so frightened of LWR "nuclear waste" {LFTR Fuel} radiation demanding
closure of all LWR reactors but have no remedy for LWR "nuclear waste" {LFTR Fuel}
to avoid a trillion dollar catastrophe just waiting to happen for each LWR but stand against investing $10B to deploy LFTRs to consume LWR "nuclear waste" {LFTR Fuel} to eliminate the TRILLION DOLLAR CATASTROPHE. As Dr Hansen proposes to use the $25B Nuclear Waste Fund to really solve this problem for the good for all God's Children, BROTHER.
But the nuclear waste from coal generators is ok????
It will last thousands of year as it is going unprocessed.
Are you aware that coal burners are more radioactive than URANIUM LWR's nuclear waste?
http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/hvistendahl/
The Dali Lama proposes a role for Nuclear Power in managing the Climate Change.
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/11/07/dalai-lama-a-role-for-nuclear-power-in-development-process/
LFTR is estimated to deliver power at $2 an installed watt, for 60-100 years.
LFTR is highly proliferation resistant. The Uranium-233 it produces is extremely difficult to use in a bomb. It is much, much, much easier to use existing solid fuel technology to make bomb material, by either enriching Uranium-235 in centrifuges or by "lightly toasting" Uranium-238 in a "research reactor" to make Plutonium-239 which is how North Korea made their stuff - and they did it without producing a single watt of nuclear power.
Banning nuclear energy to prevent nuclear bombs is as effective or sane as banning diesel fuel to prevent napalm.
Both U-235 andPu-239 can also be isolated with a SILEX laser - no reactor or centrifuges needed.
The nuclear weapon cat has been out of the bag for decades, and LFTR won't increase the threat.
But LFTR will be able to clean up the mess left behind by other reactors. So if you hate nuclear waste as much as I do, you'd support the construction of LFTRs to perform as "nuclear waste composters" to eradicate the 35 tons of waste each year that the existing solid fuel Uranium reactors produce.
All the solar panels and windmills in the world will not be able to eradicate a single atom of nuclear waste. LFTRs can, without making any more long-term (+300 year) waste.