Questions for Thorium Power, the weapons grade Pu fissioning group.

[NNadir]

I will be speaking with Seth Grae, the CEO of Thorium Power later this week.

Thorium Power, founded by Alvin Radkowsky, is the company that holds the patent for the Radkowsky configured reactor that may play an important role in developing thermal breeder reactors, should humanity survive global climate change.

Currently the company is working with the Kurchatov Institute in Russia to fission surplus weapons grade plutonium in a Radkowsky configured type Pressured Water Reactor reactor. Demonstration of this technology will lead to the ability to consume this plutonium over several decades while generating billions of kilowatt-hours of electricity, a swords into ploughshares kind of deal. This use of a normal Russian PWR to produce energy and to destroy about 60% of the weapons grade plutonium from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. It is expected that similar use can be applied in US PWR with very little modification. The plutonium that is not destroyed in the once through process will be far less suitable (because of the obtained isotopic mix) for use in weapons (effectively useless in fact) and can be recycled again. The configuration uses a Thorium blanket to extend fuel life from two to nine years (excepting the plutonium seeds which will have a normal two year lifetime.)

The use of this technology may be important in establishing the commercial thorium fuel cycle, and in irreversibly destroying weapons materials. Thus it has has both powerful anti-proliferation and powerful resource utilization implications.

I was surprised when, responding to my email of inquiry, that Seth offered to speak with me on the phone. I would be happy to relay any questions any members of the group may have when I speak with him towards the end of the week. Contact me by pm or post your questions here, if you have them, I will post answers.

[salvorhardin]

1. That's great

We really need to get this kind of two-way dialog going between scientists, engineers and the public. It would do a lot to counter some of the paranoia we tend to see around hot button issues (like nuclear power) and maybe, in time, lead to policy makers that understand the complex, technical issues they make policy on just a little more.

Questions:

I assume that each time the Pu is recycled, it is somewhat less efficient. How many times can a particular fuel unit be recycled before it costs more to recycle it than the energy it will produce?

Is the radioactivity of spent fuel lesser/greater/about the same than that of the fuel rods currently in use in nuclear reactors?

Is the half-life of spent fuel lesser/greater/about the same than that of the fuel rods currently in use in nuclear reactors?

Will new storage techniques need to be developed for spent fuel?


(Please let me know if any of my questions are idiotic).

[NNadir]

2. Excellent questions I can answer the first already.

Question 1) Each time plutonium is recycled, some of it is consumed. Because it is already necessary to dilute plutonium, either with fertile nuclei like U-238 or Thorium-232. Sometimes plutonium is diluted with elements that cannot be fissioned. Zirconium is most often the choice.

What occurs with plutonium very much depends on the speed of the neutron spectrum in the reactor. Most of the world's nuclear reactor currently use the thermal spectrum. It has been shown that if plutonium is continuously recycled in the presence of spent uranium in thermal reactors, the distribution of isotopes will be like this:

Pu-238: 8%
Pu-239: 45%
Pu-240: 21%
Pu-241: 19%
Pu-242: 8%

(The sum reflects rounding accumulations).

The data from which this is calculated can be found in Stacey Nuclear Reactor Physics Wiley, 2001 pg. 234. The original reference is Wade and Hill, Prog. Nucl. Energy, 31, page 13 (1997).

This fuel will definitely be more difficult to handle than weapons grade plutonium and will generate considerable heat. As it ages, it will also begin to put out significant amounts of gamma radiation as the Pu-241 decays to give Am-241 which is a strong gamma emitter.(Am-241 is the isotope used in smoke detectors. Almost everyone has some in their homes.)

This recycled plutonium will still be a very efficient fuel however in nuclear reactors when diluted (again with uranium or thorium) to a suitable concentration of fissionable nuclei - both Pu-241 and Pu-239 are thermally fissionable. In fact, in some ways this fuel will be superior to modern fuels since weapons diversion will be so difficult as to border on the impossible. Moreover, fuels using plutonium of this composition will probably allow for very high burn-ups, minimizing the volume of spent fuel that needs reprocessing.

Again though, Thorium Power's technology burns about 60% of the plutonium-239 loaded in it, so there isn't likely to be all that much of this recycled plutonium available. Of that 40% that remains, as much as 40% of it (or 16% of the original load) will have been transformed into other isotopes, primarily Pu-240 and Pu-241.) Thus of the original load of Pu-239, as much as 75% will have been destroyed or transformed. Thus after 5 cycles over a few decades, less than 0.1% of the plutonium will remain.

(I will try to discuss more exact numbers.)

I have a very good idea about your other questions, but I think Seth will give a far more complete and better informed idea than I could off the top of my head.

[salvorhardin]

3. Wow. Excellent answer.

So, let me get this straight (and my apologies -- this is far, far outside my field of studies in college)... What you're saying is that the return on cost for recycling the fuel is good for a few decades (about 5 cycles)?

[salvorhardin]

4. Another question...

This is a little vague...

How do the Radkowsky reactor designs compare with the pebble bed reactors which, IIRC, are being favored by the Chinese? Other than the obvious advantage of reducing weapons grade material (which alone would make them a favorite in my book). Are they safer, more powerful, etc.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

[NNadir]

7. I will answer this one as well.

There are huge differences between these types of reactor schemes.

The first is that the Radkowsky configuration is suitable for use existing reactors.

The output of nuclear reactors have increased significantly more than their consumption of fuel, mostly because as operational experience has been improved, the fuel has been loaded in ways that manage the way the fuel is consumed. If one can obtain more power from the same amount of fuel, one obviously reduces expenses and the volume of spent fuel that must be treated after it is removed from the reactor.

The unit for efficiency of fuel use in the nuclear industry, called the "burn-up" is typically given in units called "Megawatt-days/ton of heavy metal," most often abbreviated as MW-d/ton. A megawatt day is equal to 86.4 billion joules. Another unit used in the industry is "ton equivalent of oil" or "toe" which is equal to 41.4 billion joules. Thus each Megawatt-day represents about 2.1 tons of oil.

Before reactor performance was optimized, a typical burn-up for a nuclear reactor of the PWR type might be 25,000 Mw-d/ton meaning that each ton of uranium (once through cycle with standard enrichment) represented about 52,000 tons of oil. (There are 7.3 barrels of oil in each "toe", meaning that each ton of uranium yielded about the equivalent energy of 380,000 barrels of oil.

In modern times without any real physical changes to the reactor, playing with parameters with fuel loading, rearrangement of fuel rods, decreased down time etc, the performance of nuclear reactors have been driven higher, to the point that fuels now perform in the 35,000-40,000 MW-d/ton or greater range. The amount of energy obtained from essentially the same quantity of fuel was raised to make the energy equivalent the same as would be represented by 610,000 barrels of oil

The Radkowsky scheme will allow for unprecedented burn-ups in thermal reactors, typically 100,000 MW-day/ton. This is because of the nuclear properties of the U-233 allow it work as a near breeder fuel, where almost of the fissioned fissile atoms are replaced by fissile atoms from fertile nuclei nearby.

Now one ton of uranium is the equivalent of 210 toe, or 1.5 million barrels of oil. One hundred tons of fuel has actually produced 4 times as much energy as the fuels previously would have done. Note that the size of these fuels is the same as with the previous scheme, they are just slightly lighter in weight (and have much higher melting points.)

Now I will turn to the PBR:

The PBR reactor is not my favorite, since it does not allow (easily) for the reprocessing of fuels. Much of the uranium from these reactors require the throwing away of valuable uranium resources. In any case it requires a totally new type of reactor. I think the design motivation was to increase safety, which is a small affair given that many types of existing reactors are already known to be inherently safe.

I would much prefer a program based on the Radkowsky concept than on one designed around pebble beds. Some advantages of the pebble bed is that it is very, very, very cheap to build, simple in design, quasi-homogeneous, and can easily deployed to give process heat rather than simply driving a turbine. There are however, other reactors with these features that are not nearly so wasteful of resources.

The PBR has not been built for commercial use. Therefore it will have a learning curve. It's not an overall bad design, but there are much better options in my opinion.

[salvorhardin]

8. Thanks again

I had no idea that reactor efficiency had been increased so dramatically nor did I realize that the Radkowsky concept could be implemented in existing reactors. What does it take to retrofit an existing reactor to use the Radkowsky concept? Is it a large cost? Does it involve a lot of retraining for reactor operators and personnel?

[Massacure]

5. Why do we need different reactor types to fission different fuels?

[struggle4progress]

6. Letter to the NYT re Radkowsky Thorium Reactor (2 June 1998)

<snip> "Finding a Formula to Light the World but Guard the Bomb" (June 2) quotes the Radkowsky Thorium Power Corp. and commentators as stating that plutonium from the Radkowsky reactor core "could never produce more than a fizzle" if made into a nuclear weapon. At an explosive yield of 1000 or 2000 tons of explosive, compared with two tons of explosive in a truck bomb, and augmented by the nuclear radiation, a fizzle would level many city blocks. But the company and the commentators are wrong; this material can make a reliable bomb. <snip>

As emphasized in a February 1998 study by the Royal Society of Britain, "The surest anti-proliferation measure is to stop reprocessing spent fuel and to reduce the quantity of separated plutonium in store." This would apply also to the Radkowsky approach.

Sincerely yours,

Richard L. Garwin

The writer is Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations and was an author of a 1995 National Academy of Sciences Report on Reactor Options for Disposition of Excess Weapon Plutonium

http://www.fas.org/RLG/980602-rlg-nyt.htm

[NNadir]

9. And maybe you can name the number of uncovered terrorist plots?

Dr. Garwin believes that the "surest way to prevent plutonium diversion is to stop reprocessing fuel."

Next one buries it forever and hopes it goes away.

The plutonium that will first be used in the Radkowsky configuration will be weapons grade, with very pure Pu-239 content, in metallic form usually in a gallium alloy. Clearly this fuel is very much available for diversion, or even just reassembly. It is machinable and easily assembled into bomb parts.

Now, imagine that this same material is dissolved in acid, and irradiated for two years. 60% is fissioned and 40% has an isotopic mixture that makes it continuously hot and suitable for handling by expensive robots.

Now you can't get in to the League of Party Animals Who Failed All Courses Having the Word Probability In It if you can correctly answer this question.

Which is safer? Which material represents the lowest risk?

Really the who issue of non-proliferation is discussed to the appoint of absurd stupidity. We have had many thousands of bombings worldwide over the last several decades. We have had a major state lose control briefly of its nuclear weapons infrastructure. There has not been one event involving nuclear terrorism since 1945. There has not been a single incident where plutonium has been diverted from a commercial nuclear program to make a nuclear weapon, with the exception of a few tests in 1963, designed to test assumptions. The weapons worked, but poorly so, but the difficulty was so extreme - even for what was then the most advanced weapons lab in the world - that no evidence that there has even been a febid attempt to repeat it.

The way that anti-environmental anti-nuclear radiation paranoids work is to imagine a scenario that they think can work (in spite of the fact their understanding of radiochemistry and nuclear physics is abysmally poor), discard any reference to the probabilities involved, and then present as a certainty that must be discussed.

I would like to point to another certainty: The destruction of the city of New Orleans, which in my mind just one of the first of a series of such events that may be attributable to global climate change.

Which risk is greater, the risk that a terrorist will sneak into a nuclear reactor and remove fuel rods that are dangerously radioactive, sneak them out under his coat, built remote systems to handle them, dissolve them, remove and conceal the highly radioactive fission products (without being killed in the process, then purchase in sequence, machinery of the type used to fabricate bomb cores remotely in precisely the right form to account to the high risk of premature criticality owing to Pu-240, appropriate chemical explosives that are resistant to heat and high radiation (from Pu-238 and Pu-241 not found in weapons grade material) purchase the precisely timed super capacitors and all the other electronics, align these explosives precisely on a hot highly radioactive (from Am-241, Pu-241's daughter) and finally find a way to deliver this hot contraption to the center of Los Angeles or the risk that New Orleans will be destroyed tonight.

I have no idea of who Richard Garwin (and please don't bore me with his resume however impressive you think it is; I always consider the source,) is, but he seems like one of those foreign policy twits, whose scientific credentials might be enough to get him into a spot in the Bush Administration with a job as "science debunker," but not into a decent laboratory where people still do science.

In any case, Garwin understands the issues just as well as say David Brooks understands Iraq, which is to say not at all.

[struggle4progress]

11. "... Richard L. Garwin .. received .. the Ph.D. in Physics from ..

.. the University of Chicago in 1949.

He is IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. After three years on the faculty of the University of Chicago, he joined IBM Corporation in 1952, and was until June 1993 IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York; Adjunct Research Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Columbia University. In addition, he is a consultant to the U.S. government on matters of military technology, arms control, etc. He has been Director of the IBM Watson Laboratory, Director of Applied Research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and a member of the IBM Corporate Technical Committee. He has also been Professor of Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. From 1994 to 2004 he was Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

He has made contributions in the design of nuclear weapons, in instruments and electronics for research in nuclear and low-temperature physics, in the establishment of the nonconservation of parity and the demonstration of some of its striking consequences, in computer elements and systems, including superconducting devices, in communication systems, in the behavior of solid helium, in the detection of gravitational radiation, and in military technology. He has published more than 500 papers and been granted 45 U.S. patents. He has testified to many Congressional committees on matters involving national security, transportation, energy policy and technology, and the like. He is coauthor of many books, among them Nuclear Weapons and World Politics (1977), Nuclear Power Issues and Choices (1977), Energy: The Next Twenty Years (1979), Science Advice to the President (1980), Managing the Plutonium Surplus: Applications and Technical Options (1994), Feux Follets et Champignons Nucleaires (1997) (in French with Georges Charpak), and Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? (2001) (with Georges Charpak).

He was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee 1962-65 and 1969-72, and of the Defense Science Board 1966-69. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the IEEE, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2002 he was elected again to the Council of the National Academy of Sciences. <snip> http://www.fas.org/rlg/

[struggle4progress]

12. The point is that this reactor doesn't solve the bomb-grade plutonium ..

.. problem ...

[NNadir]

14. Nothing solves the problem for closed minds.

You don't know any thing whatsoever about nuclear reactors or nuclear chemistry. You have no interest in them, except to find ever more silly reasons to make them go away.

You do know how to post resumes however, though unfortunately not resumes relevant to the subject at hand.

Why don't you start a thread called "Authorities who think for me and what I think they ae saying?"

My intention in creating this thread was to offer an avenue for people who actually know or want to learn about nuclear technology, not for mystics looking for oracles.

The position of anti-environmental anti-nuclear radiation paranoids with poor educations is to keep radioactive materials in as dangerous as possible so that when they appeal to their fear they can scream "dangerous! dangerous!" The position of Alvin Radkowsky was to minimize the risks of plutonium that was specifically designed to make weapons.

Now in the twisted imaginings of the members of theInternational Society of People Who Baled Out of Science Courses After Failing Freshman Physics
> plutonium is immutable and exists only to kill people. No amount of reason, science or instruction can change that opinion, because it is a religion.

People like Seth Grae, however, are intimately involved with the Kurchatov Institute, which is filled with some of the world's greatest experts in nuclear fission physics and chemistry.

Speaking of "dangerous! dangerous!" what's the update on that leaky pipe at Sellafield? Is everybody in Cumbria dead yet?

[struggle4progress]

17. I cited a nuclear weapons engineering expert who is also a policy expert.

His expertise might actually be relevant, since the letter of his (which I posted supra) disagrees with the rosy predictions (which you have been making above) that Radkowsky reactor approach can prevent potential reuse of plutonium as weapons material.

You, as usual, confronted with someone who disagrees with your position, once again simply resort to personal attacks and attempt to change the subject ...

[NNadir]

18. Whatever. Why do you need validation from me?

You know all the world's experts.

The rest of the world, including thousands upon thousands of nuclear engineers clearly doesn't know as much as your foreign policy expert picked from among many thousands of people who have examined the question, including the scientists of the Kurchatov Institute and the nuclear engineer who helped to design the first pressurized water reactor.

It doesn't matter obviously to you, because you do resumes so well, that the man who helped develop the technology - which in contrast to solar daydreams - has actually produced energy on a 100's of exajoule scale has designed a thorium breeder.

What concerns you is not what IS happening, but what could happen. Although I hold a very, very, very, very, very low opinion of the ability of my antagonists to understand what I have said, I have not said that the Radkowsky reactor can eliminate nuclear weapons. I have merely mentioned, correctly as it happens, that the reactor consumes a portion of the weapons grade plutonium and converts it to plutonium that is much, much, much more difficult to use as nuclear weapons.

Also, speaking of changing the subject, I wrote about a reactor that uses plutonium that is already isolated. So the question of the cited idiot, Garwin, who is talking about reprocessing is irrelevant to the subject of the treatment of weapons grade plutonium. It has already been isolated. It has been reduced to metal and machined into nuclear bomb cores.

Now, I contend that if Garwin, about whom I don't give a shit by the way, says that plutonium should not be recycled, he is wrong; he is a fool, and he is weak-minded on the subject of nuclear energy specifically, and all energy in general. I don't base this what he did in 1953 at IBM or his tenure at the Harvard school of government in 1993. I base it on what he says.

In spite of all the crying and whining about the leaky pipe in Sellafield, which according to the whiners in charge, apparently killed everyone in Cumbria, we must have actinide recycling. It is still safer than coal. It is still safer than oil. It is still safer than sitting on our spoiled brat asses and praying for a solar nirvana that will never arrive.

I regard the anti-nuclear position as being risk ignorant, as the events in Louisana demonstrated graphically in my mind this morning.

The weak minded want to represent that nuclear energy is the only form of energy that has any risk. This is not the case. The death toll from Chernobyl will not exceed the death toll from hurricanes, droughts, and other global climate change induced causes. Just because the victims in Mali (of the drought) are black and the victims of Chernobyl (largely) are not does not change the morality of the situation. Further there is a decided risk that global climate change will enter an irreversible feedback loop, a risk that has an expectation value that exceeds the risk of nuclear weapons diversion by huge orders of magnitude, orders of magnitude that are so large, you could not be in Greenpeace and still understand enough about the integers as to even remotely comprehend them.

For the record, I fully concede that most plutonium on the planet could in theory be used to make a nuclear weapons. This is a very different thing that contending that it is likely that diverted plutonium will ever be so used. With many thousands of reactor-years of experience we have not even found a single bit of evidence that anyone has even attempted this feat. In fact all we have on the subject is the mindless speculation of radiation paranoids with poor thinking skills that apparently resulted in even worse educations.

In any case, you have produced the usual zero showing that the consuming of plutonium increases the risk of plutonium diversion.

I knew that as usual the approach would be listing irrelevant credentials as if producing a link to a resume is the same as thinking.

[jpak]

19. The safest cheapest way to deal with the plutonium menace

is to (1) stop producing it, (2) end reprocessing and (3) incorporate existing military stockpiles into ceramic material and isolate it geologically.

Everything else is Larouchian Cheneyite bullshit.

Finally, I'm a molten salt guy, and I will soon become fabulously rich with my new advanced imaginary whacko molten salt reactor design!!!!!!

:hi:

[NNadir]

21. Dream On.

I guess the solar fantasy crowd has no intention of apologizing for its failure to stop Katrina.

How many hurricanes will it take before we substitute rational fear of global climate change for irrational fear of plutonium?

How many people have died from plutonium in the last 25 years and how infinite is the number killed from global climate change this morning?

Radiation paranoids don't know?

They don't care?

I didn't think so.

Someone pmailed this morning to show me the official response of the official Society of Spoiled Hard Drinking Brats with Zero Understanding of Physics to the disaster that they worked so hard to cause by putting their irrational fear of the elements of the periodic table above global climate change.

And what is that response: Use the occasion to ask for more money for themselves.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4509906

Will these people lift a finger to help the current or future victims of global climate change? I doubt it. More likely they will go to a bar and do what all spoiled brats with poor minds do: Congratulate themselves for being themselves.

And now let's talk about the mindless name calling and the logical fallacy of Guilt by Association. Certainly if I were trying to defend the weak notion that commercial plutonium is "dangerous," because I say so, and was still unable to produce a single person injured by plutonium over more than several recent decades, I would need to fall back on logical fallacies of these types. This is because there are in fact zero ways to defend the notion that nuclear power is more dangerous than its alternatives.

In fact, if one examines the arguments of the antagonists of nuclear power, one can actually see a text book of logical fallacy, the most common being the aforementioned case and some others that are displayed with astonishingly amusing regularity: "Appeal to incompetent authority, argument by consensus, affirming the consequent... hell, I don't have time even to get pass the A's.

Rational readers should feel free to sort through the list and observe for themselves:

A textbook on how to argue if one has a very weak grasp on reality.

Hell, I might even feel compelled to drink myself into such a state as to make shit like this sound good to myself.

I don't have to rely on a list of the Nobel Prize winners in science who support nuclear energy. I can, as many have graciously written me to note, defend my position by merely explicating the facts.

Note: Some people write me from time to time to ask why I put up with the nonsense and shit and why I dignify this stuff with a response. ("Dignify" might :-) be the wrong word.) I appreciate the support I get, but trust me, I love this. Nothing makes my arguments quite so well as the quality of the opposition.

I really don't give a shit about Dick Cheney (who used radiation paranoia promoted by mindless nitwits everywhere - and not the actual existence of nuclear weapons - to incite murder). Dick Cheney has not caused one nuclear power plant to be built and in fact he has done much to promote fear of all nuclear things including those that represent our last hope. In this exercise he has been subtly egged on by nitwits with a poor understanding of physics and chemistry in particular, and science in general.

I, for instance, knew immediately that the Niger claim was bogus - because I have actually taken, understood, and passed high level science courses, and because I understand how nuclear things - including power plants and bombs actually work.

I must confess have really never been drunk enough to have spent my time contemplating LaRouche either, although I did hear of him some decades ago, much as one hears of Jerry Fawell or Bill O'Reilly without actually having been directly exposed. I suppose if I were enough of a twit to take LaRouche seriously, I wouldn't be writing so much on nuclear issues, because I would be, well, a stupefied twit.

Enough joking though.

Serious matters intrude and among the most serious is the serious assault on our planet's atmosphere.

As we think about the effects of global climate change on this sober evening, after it has ripped yet another city in a series of cities to shreds, an old city with a rich history and a rich heritage, the rational will know what we must do.

The irrational, however, will simple continue to dribble spittle, never even having the faintest notion of what it means to reap what one sows, but none of this should in any way distract us.

[jpak]

22. Greenpeace responsible for the destruction of NO???

Sickest strawman yet - and truly bizarre.

Even for devotees of Lyndon...

[NNadir]

23. Yeah. It's called "denial."

The members of Greenpeace, with their very, very, very weak grasp on science, continue to rail irrationally and religiously against the only means to arrest global climate change that is available to humanity.

They think, get this, that there is some magical form of solar technology that can address the crisis. Even though they have not been able, even with tons and tons and tons and decades and decades and decades of positive press and wishful thinking, to produce even 1% of the energy the world needs through their appeals to mythology: Magic PV.

Of course magical PV power doesn't really work. If it did, it would already have a significant portion of the world's energy generation capacity, say like http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=2&catid=106">20%.

This of course has not even remotely arrested the Internation Society of Making Empty Promises for 50 years in the Future, Because All of Them Will Have Pickeled Their Livers By Then from making the same silly claims they've been making for decades with almost no result. Nor will it ever do so. I note that the failure of Jesus to re-appear over the last 2000 years has had little effect on people predicting that he will still do so.

I'd call this a pretty dramatic indicator of responsibility.

This is pretty comparable to the Repuke party which contends that the events in the last two days are "normal fluctuations," staring reality in the face and not even remotely grasping it.

Now, mind you, some of these pathetic intellectual wimps will themselves suffer for their stupidity, but this is no consolation for the innocent who also suffer.

Now, when all of the fossil fuel plants in the world are shut, and when solar power is providing a significant portion of the world's energy to people whose median income is somewhat near the world per capita income, it may be realistic and worthwhile to discuss replacing nuclear plants with solar plants - if - and this is a big if - the demonstration shows that they are environmentally sustainable. Should that day of solar nirvana even be close, I will be among the first to discuss this option, should I, and anyone else survive the consequences of global climate change.

But none of these conditions prevail as in "zero" as in "zip" as in "de nada" as as in "nichts".

So as long as the effects of global climate change are upon us people who evoke magical "solutions" that do not exist, including the members of Society Of Self Absorbed Twits With Less Than Zero Comprehension of Ethics will (gasp) bear responsibility for their actions.

[phantom power]

10. My question: "how do we make it happen?"

That's rather broad, and it's not even limited to nuclear power. But I'd be interested to hear his vision (if he has one) about how we get from where we are to an economy that isn't dependent on fossil fuels, is carbon-neutral, etc.

That covers a lot of territory, from politics to economics to technology. But I sort of hope he might have some ideas about all of it. I hope somebody out there does.

[NNadir]

13. That's a pretty broad question, indeed.

The questions may beyond the scope of Thorium Power's main concern which is destroy weapons grade plutonium while generating electricity.

In the current climate - with uranium being so cheap and so available - this is by the way, probably not the most well funded undertaking. The Clinton administration was very much involved in fissioning surplus weapons plutonium - Al Gore was involved in this work - and the US congress funded Russian programs to do it. Under the boy king, these programs have been cut back considerably. I will however ask Seth some questions along these lines and see what he says.

[phantom power]

15. Maybe the better question would be "what is his business-plan?"

However, in the case of a business like his, we're still talking about the intersection of politics, technology and economics.

[NNadir]

16. That will be among my first questions.

The business plan is probably problematic. The world is awash in fissile material, a huge over supply in fact.

The destruction of weapons grade plutonium, however, is an important affair. For the long term as nuclear power expands, is the supply of fissile material will become increasingly important. For the short term, the business is problematic. For the long term, it is an excellent business to be in.

[struggle4progress]

20. The Case Against Using Military Plutonium

Remarks by Paul Leventhal
Nuclear Control Institute
To a Symposium on "Nuclear Material: A Clear and Present Danger"
The American News Women's Club
Washington, DC

March 12, 1998

<snip> Stimulating commerce in plutonium is a recipe for disaster. That's why U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy for more than two decades has been to not encourage and, where possible, to actively discourage the use of plutonium as reactor fuel. <snip>

DOE's original studies show that the immobilization approach could get started seven years earlier, and be finished 13 years sooner, than the MOX approach. The sooner plutonium can be disposed of, the sooner we can make the arms control and disarmament gains of recent years permanent. Recent DOE analyses now project that the MOX program will start only a year after the immobilization program and that the two will finish at about the same time. But these are based on highly unrealistic assumptions about fabrication and use of MOX fuel, and should not be taken seriously. <snip>

In the United States, assuming nuclear utilities continue to insist on fees to irradiate MOX fuel, and insist on receiving that fuel at a substantial discount over the price they would have paid for uranium fuel, DOE's own studies suggest that the MOX approach could cost as much as $2.6 billion---two and a half times more than the immobilization approach, estimated by DOE to cost just over $1 billion. <snip>

The proliferation risks of the MOX option are substantial. It clearly encourages the civil use of plutonium, as Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director John Holum warned in a memorandum to then-Energy Secretary O'Leary in November 1996:

I recommend strongly that you reject the hybrid option and select immobilization. . . . U.S. decisions on plutonium disposition are inextricably linked with U.S. efforts to reduce stockpiles as well as limit the use of plutonium worldwide. The multi-decade institutionalization of plutonium use in U.S. commercial reactors would set a very damaging precedent for U.S. nonproliferation policy. In contrast, an immobilization-only alternative would have no proliferation downside for either the U.S. or for influencing Russia, and potentially could have important benefits in supporting our continuing efforts with Russia to secure its stockpiles of weapon-usable material. <snip>

http://www.nci.org/s/sp31298.htm

[NNadir]

24. Discussion postponed until Tuesday.

As a consequence of new interest in energy in the United States, this discussion has been rescheduled for Tuesday. Seth Grae is being interviewed by the media today.

[phantom power]

25. Is his company publicly traded?

More generally, are you aware of any particular companies that would make up a reasonable "nuclear energy" stock portfolio?

[NNadir]

26. No. It is privately held.

I hold no nuclear energy stocks right now, but when I begin moving my currency out of the US, I would certainly look at Siemens, which owns Framatome. Areva in France is also a builder of pressurized water reactors. In Japan, Toshiba, which manufactures the Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor will have a strong position.

I believe that AECL in Canada is owned by the Canadian Government, but certainly the CANDU reactor will be a major player if the world survives global climate change. If it is publicly traded I would buy that even though the company is losing lots of money right now. Two CANDU-6 (advanced) reactors were recently completed in China, being built in just under four year's time, from pouring of concrete to commercial operation. Wolsong 3 and 4 were built in comparable time frames in Korea. Romania is building a second CANDU to supplement its highly successful first unit. Argentina, which operates two esoteric heavy water reactors accounting for 10% of Argentine electrical power, will complete a third heavy water reactor whose construction was suspended when the economy and currency destablized (as ours soon will). Like everyone else in the nuclear industry, AECL is looking to China for business. There has been some talk about building CANDU's in the United States, but again, this country is as reliable as Argentina once was.

British Nuclear Fuels, owned by the British Government, owns Westinghouse Nuclear which it will spin off. Westinghouse is building reactors in China and the API-1000 seems like an excellent reactor. It is anticipated that 4 API-1000's will be among the 32 reactors China plans to build. The price tag will be about $1.5 billion dollars each. I would look to see who acquires Westinghouse. Westinghouse is also active in the Pebble Bed Reactor technology, which personally I don't like for technical reasons. However this reactor is likely to be an easy commercial success, since it is cheap to build, easy to operate, and has - no matter what I may say - high levels of public acceptance. The PBR reactor is easily modified to make motor fuels since it is a high temperature device.

General Atomics, which designed the (failed) high temperature gas cooled reactor at Ft St. Vrain, has redesigned this reactor, giving one that is said to operate at a thermal efficiency of 50%. They need to prove themselves in this field, but they are also privately held. This type of reactor is easily adapted to make motor fuels so if this company goes public at some time, it will be worth a look. General Atomics has been a major player in looking at the intriguing sulfur-iodine cycle, which is a thermochemical means of generating hydrogen from water for the manufacture of motor fuels. The side product of this scheme is electricity. The combined efficiency of these systems (motor fuel + electricity) is over 60%. Sulfur-iodine patents have expired, and so this chemistry is available to almost any nuclear company that wants to employ it. I believe that the Chinese are building just such a reactor right now.

I have no idea whether foreigners can buy Russian Nuclear companies, but I also have no doubt that Russia will be a major nuclear reactor supplier in the future.

Much of the nuclear future will be embraced of course, by China and India, which have major commitments to nuclear energy. I do not know if they allow foreign investment in their nuclear companies.

While utilities running nuclear power plants have done well because the reactors are cheap to run - lately even cheaper than coal plants and that's not counting the external costs - it has been a difficult time over the last few decades for reactor manufacturers because of stupidity and mysticism. This is sure to change as reality sinks in but I don't know whether the US, an economic basket case rather like what Argentina once was (though few people seem to realize this yet) will be much of a player in the future of nuclear energy. It's probably too late for us, but we can always go to the bar with the Greenpeace kids and drink ourselves into stupors to forget that our country was once great.

From my mind the best reactors available right now are standard pressurized water reactors which have a spectacular record of commercial success, and CANDU reactors. If I were a power executive being asked to choose between these technologies, I would choose CANDU's hands down. In general, with a few exceptions, any company that owns and operates nuclear reactors is probably a good bet. These things are cash cows now and as natural gas becomes expensive, they will be even better cash cows.

Thorium Power, were it to go public, will certainly be a good bet for someone young. While the world is currently awash in fissionable isotopes, this will not always be the case. Thus people who understand Thorium will be very very valuable. It is worth noting, however that the Russian supply of weapons grade plutonium would be consumed by just three reactors in about 14 years time by Radkowsky reactors. After that time, Radkowsky reactors would require commercial (reactor grade) material which may involve some physics changes. Plutonium burned in a Radkowsky reactor will be of a type seldom seen on earth these days. A typical loading of plutonium in a Radkowsky configured reactor would involve about 0.8 tons of the fuel have better than 90% Pu-239 and about 7% Pu-240. On discharge about 0.2 tons of Pu would remain, and it would have an isotopic composition of 30% Pu-239, 42% Pu-240, and 20% Pu-241 amd 8% Pu-242. Although Pu-241 is fissionable in both thermal and fast reactors, it has a relatively short half-life, roughly 13 years, before decaying into Am-241. Thus it would be necessary to quickly recycle the plutonium if one desired to capture the energy value of Pu-241 without the transmutation of Am-241 into Cm-242 and decay to Pu-238 and/or U-234 and the requirement for the addition of yet another neutron to make a thermally fissionable fuel. (Some additional energy would be available from the requisite nuclear decays.) I will ask of Thorium Power is interested in this approach. Of course another 150 tons of weapons grade plutonium could be available in the happy event of total nuclear disarmament by the US and Russia.

[phantom power]

27. Thanks for the detailed response.

I'll see if I can translate your advice into good investments.

It really is true that every crisis is an opportunity. I have a feeling that there will be people who get rich on non-fossil energy investments, be that wind, nuclear, solar, or otherwise, even while the world's economy in general is in ugly chaos.

I'm probably not astute enough to get rich, but I figure I might at least up my odds of economic survival, compared to background probabilities.

[NNadir]

28. Some further considerations on world plutonium supply and Thorium Power.

The company's raison d'etre is the destruction of weapons grade plutonium, but the plutonium consumption figures given above give some idea about the magnitude of the amount of energy obtainable from plutonium.

So called surplus weapons plutonium is thought to be around 30-50 metric tons. As we've seen, this is enough to run three full sized reactors for 14 years.

Overall, the world's inventory of weapons grade plutonium is thought to be around 200 MT.

Reactor grade plutonium is much larger, an additional 800 MT, giving a total, in round figures of 1000 MT.

Since existing PWR reactors can be used in a Radkowsky configuration, and each would consume about 0.6 tons of plutonium over a period of two years, we see that the world supply of plutonium would be sufficient charge the plutonium seeds of the existing fleet of US nuclear reactors for about 33 years. This would not include the fissionable material that must be placed in the blanket, but this blanket would certainly over the long run be represented by U-233 derived from thorium, and not U-235 produced in enrichment plants.

Moreover, if some of the U-233 were removed and used to fuel flexible CANDU type reactors charged with uranium thorium mixes, it would be possible to maintain an appropriately sized reservoir of plutonium for many centuries by interplay of these reactors.

The burnup of Radkowsky reactor, over 100,000 MW-day/ton, will be a little less than triple that existing fueling motifs. Thus, if this reactor scheme were adopted, the cost of fuel will continue to drop from already absurdly low costs. (I have often shown that the price of uranium is the equivalent of gasoline at less than 0.1 cents a gallon.)

We have no idea who the economic powerhouses of the 21st century will be although we can be reasonably sure that it will not be the United States after its now historical decimation by the Bush regime. However a country having the same energy demand as we did when we were a great country would need about 1000 - 1200 reactors to meet its entire energy demand. This suggests, barring a complete world wide economic collapse, that the reactor building business will be a good one in the 21st century. CANDU's will probably be the key.