Thorium Energy Alliance Conference to be Held in Chicago May 31-June 1 2012

T.E.A. Conference 4 - May 31, 2012

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Registration TEAC IV May 2012 $199.00 Early Bird Individual Attendee

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Illinois Senate Votes to Lift Nuclear Moratorium

In a rare fit of rationality, the Illinois Senate has voted to rescind the 23-year-old moratorium on the development of nuclear power in this state. See title link.

One wonders what came over them. Maybe there's a new virus going around. If so, I hope it becomes a pandemic. But maybe they were just Scared Straight by the recession and the relentless upward creep of liquid fuel prices. Maybe it's realizing that Illinois, the crucible of civil nuclear power and once a manufacturing powerhouse, is quickly fading to second-tier status (or worse) economically as our manufacturing has moved away, first to southern states and then offshore.

And perhaps our pols are at last becoming Peak Oil-aware, and realize that natural gas will soon follow oil to peak production, then to inevitable decline and eventual depletion. At last Peak Oil is beginning to get media attention, and our leaders are beginning to recognize that the decline of fossil fuels is a much larger threat to our civilization than Global Weirding. This is not to trivialize the challenges presented by rapid climate change, but to say that the decline of concentrated energy is a much larger threat.

The Obama administration also seems to recognize the towering threat to our ability to support ourselves and provide the basic decencies with either fossil fuels or the "renewable", diffuse forms of energy such as wind and solar, and that reliance upon them will make us much poorer and that there's no way that we can run any fraction of our systems with them. Gradually, by increments, the administration seems to be moving away from its former commitment to wind and solar, possibly recognizing that there is no way that the incredibly concentrated energy available only from nuclear can ever be matched, either in cost or reliability, by the diffuse energy available to solar and wind farms.

Now we can hope for the regulatory reform necessary to permit the development and deployment of newer, cleaner, safer, and vastly cheaper nuclear technologies, such as the Molten Salt Reactor and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.

Save the Uranium 233

Kirk Sorensen of Energy from Thorium has graciously granted me permission to post in its entirety his series of posts concerning the Department of Energy's planned destruction of its stockpile of Uranium 233, a material that is not only essential to the functioning of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, but is extremely valuable in nuclear medicine. The DOE plans to destroy the U-233 starting in 2012 as part of a comprehensive plan to reduce the amount of weapons-grade material. This is specious, for U-233 can only be used in nuclear weapons after undergoing an enrichment process vastly more complex than that for isotopes that are vastly more plentiful.

Please write to your elected representatives and urge them to take action to prevent the destruction of this valuable material.

From the EFT blog:

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Save the Uranium-233!

The Department of Energy has been engaged in a terrible effort to destroy--permanently--what might be the most precious substance on Earth: Uranium-233.

Why is uranium-233 so precious? Because in a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor, U-233 represents essentially unlimited energy. How can that be so? Because in a LFTR, U-233 "catalyses" the consumption of thorium, which is natural and abundant. Every kilogram of U-233 represents roughly a megawatt of power in a LFTR--forever.

This might sound like some kind of "perpetual motion" machine, but it's very much grounded in nuclear reality. U-233 is what thorium turns into when exposed to neutrons. U-233 is fissile, thorium is not. But thorium can capture the neutrons from fissioned U-233 and then replace the U-233 consumed.


So a LFTR, started on U-233, will burn through its original "start charge" fairly quickly, but will continue to form new U-233 at the same rate it's consumed. So after 1, 10, or 100 years, the same amount of U-233 is there as was there when the reactor got started.


That's how U-233 "catalyses" unlimited energy production from thorium.

Here's some images describing the inventory of U-233 that the DOE currently has at Oak Ridge National Lab.

One kilo of U-233 in a LFTR for a year: one megawatt*year (8,760,000 kilowatt*hours)

One kilo of U-233 in a LFTR for 10 years: ten megawatt*years (87,600,000 kilowatt*hours)

One kilo of U-233 in a LFTR for 100 years: 100 megawatt*years (876,000,000 kilowatt*hours)

The longer you use U-233, the more it's worth. Let's say electricity sells for a nickel per kW*hr.

One kilo, one year: half a million dollars.

One kilo, ten years: 5 million dollars.

One kilo, one hundred years: 50 million dollars.


Anyone else know of something worth $50M per kg?

But the DOE is determined to destroy this precious resource (and we have about 1000 kg of U-233) by mixing it with U-238 and making it worthless for future use. What's worse, they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make this precious resource into waste!

Why are we sabotaging our future by destroying U-233?

Call your congressman (especially if you live in Tennessee) and beg them to intervene!

Further discussion on the thorium-forum on this topic.

Why We Need the Liquid Thorium Reactor

The Daily Kos once published a great post, Why We Need the Liquid Thorium Reactor, which supplies an easily-understood explanation for a complex technology that is becoming extremely important in the nuclear industry. It's recommended reading for those who don't have the patience to wade through the more technical nuclear blogs I link to on my blogroll.

For those who want to explore the subject in more depth, Charles Barton at Nuclear Green , and Kirk Sorensen  and Charles Barton together at Energy From Thorium discuss the LFTR technology as well as other newer nuclear technologies and "renewable" technologies, in great detail on these two blogs, which are considered by other scientists and technicians to be among the richest sources of energy information on the web.

The United States, now a technological laggard, is planning only Generation III light water reactors, which, while being vast improvements on older nuclear technologies in terms of safety, efficiency, and cost, are still tremendously expensive and inflexible. Current industry players here in the United States tend to be dismissive of the thorium technologies, as I discovered when I attended a "dog and pony" show for a uranium mining stock recently and, when I inquired of its CEO if there were plans to mine thorium, he was downright defensive (it seemed to me) and said that the thorium technology would never be developed and had no potential. I could see from his reaction that I'd hit a nerve, for thorium is vastly more plentiful than uranium 235 and would probably render his struggling little uranium mining operation superfluous. Meanwhile, other countries are not waiting for the United States to put its stamp of approval on the most promising energy technology since the first controlled nuclear chain reaction here in Chicago nearly 70 years ago, but are forging ahead and aggressively developing thorium nuclear power, with us or without us. India has been unable to trade in conventional nuclear fuel because of its exclusion from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and therefore has a much greater incentive to develop new technologies that do not require it, and is aggressively developing thorium technology to exploit its indigenous reserves of thorium. Not surprisingly, India has become the front-runner in the development of the LFTR and intends to supply 25% of its electricity by this technology by 2050.

The LFTR technology makes for an intrinsically much safer, cleaner and cheaper reactor that extends the fuel cycle almost into infinity, is much more "scalable" in that the units are smaller, for power plants that can consist of one small reactor for a small town, or clustered together as need dictates. The units are built at the factory and transported sealed by truck and rail to the site, and there can be either buried for greater security or, as some technicians suggest, installed in decommissioned coal-fired plants.

The United States, like other formerly successful countries, is pouring the last of its wealth and resources into the rearguard effort to sustain old, obsolete, and unsustainable industries while spurning developments that could considerably offset the depletion of fossil fuel supplies, supply much cleaner energy and far greater quantities of it, and replace our dying old industries as the drivers of economic growth, with new, growing industries supplying the goods, services, jobs, and wealth we will need in the future. Our regulatory agencies and our ossified utilities with their protected monopolies are years behind the curve in knowledge and development of new technologies.

Instead of shoveling evermore money and effort at shoring up the dying auto and suburban-house-building industries, we need to remove the obstructions to new technologies and new industries, and most of all rediscover the sense of purpose and forward motion that made this country, 100 years ago, the greatest industrial powerhouse the world had ever seen and gave us the prosperity and unparalleled comfort and amenity that we now seem to think are God-given entitlements.  The revival of the nuclear power industry and the development of new nuclear technologies could be the start of the development of a new industrial economy that is sustainable for many decades into the future and could make it possible for our swelling population to make a living and enjoy a reasonable level of comfort and amenity in a time of dwindling resources and heated competition for remaining supplies of liquid fuels.