>> For our presentation today from Kirk Sorensen,
the founder of Flibe Energy.
Kirk has been a promoter of energy from Thorium
for a long time as [INDISTINCT] energyfromthorium.com
where pretty big community of amateurs and
experts from around the world that had been
contributing to the community effort to define
what would be the optimal Thorium reactor,
nuclear reactor which generates electricity
from Thorium.
This is a technology that's been around for
a long time since, shortly after World War
Two.
It was matured well up until early 1970s and
then, and then kind of suddenly ended in favor
of the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor which
then also ended.
And Kirk will give us a talk today and explain
kind of what went wrong, why it stopped, why
it--how is this been done.
You know, if it's such a great idea, why aren’t
we doing it?
And their actions have very good reasons for
that and maybe other reasons are cost and
then, maybe we should start doing it again.
So, please have Kirk Sorensen.
>> SORENSEN: Thank you very much, Chris.
I'm very glad to be here at Google today and
given another Tech-talk.
I always enjoy coming and been a part of these
things.
The question that I'm going to try to answer
today is one that I'm often asked as I give
presentations on Thorium.
In fact, I'm almost always asked this question
which is, "Kirk, Thorium sounds like a great
idea.
It sounds like it's a good technology, why
didn’t this happen?"
We are Flibe Energy a new company to develop
liquid fluoride Thorium reactor technology.
We're following the vision of Alvin Weinberg.
He was the director of Oak Ridge National
Lab from the 50s to the 1970s and he had a
vision of how we could use Thorium to advance
beyond the current constrains of our society
in terms of fossil fuels, hydro power and
existing nuclear technology.
One of the amazing parts about his vision
was how this could transform not only the
US economy but many other places in the world.
Some of which don’t have the resources that
we have in terms of fresh water or arable
land.
This is a vision he had of how Thorium reactors
could be used to desalinate water, grow crops
in desert areas and to some of us like caught
terraforming the earth, but to really truly
change the economic balance of the world.
Weinberg's vision on the other hand, was brought
to an end in the early 1970s and that is really
the subject of the talk today.
There really were three options for nuclear
energy at the dawn of the nuclear era.
There was Uranium-235 which was fissile form
of Uranium.
This was the form of Uranium, they could actually
be utilized directly in a nuclear reactor.
Most of the Uranium was the Uranium-238.
This had to be transformed into another nuclear
fuel called Plutonium before it could be used.
And then there was Thorium and in a similar
magnitude reining 238, it also had to be transformed
into another nuclear fuel, Uranium-233 before
it could use in a reactor.
There were some significant differences though
between these three fuels.
As I mentioned, Uranium-235 could be used
directly.
The other two had to be transformed and that
meant, they needed two neutrons to be consumed,
one to transform them and one to fission them.
And in order for this to be a sustainable
process, you have to know what will they emit
more than two neutrons when they fission.
And the answer was, "Yes, they did."
In fact, all three of them emitted more than
two neutrons when they fission.
Here was Uranium-235, Uranium-233 admitted
about two and a half neutrons per fission
and Plutonium with fission with almost three
neutrons per fission.
So, it would emit the most neutrons when it
fissions.
So, the first answer was yes.
All three of the fuels gave off enough neutrons
to sustain their consumption of reactor.
But there was more to the story, this is a
busy graph and I apologize in advance for
it.
But it tells the story of much of our nuclear
history.
And what it shows is, Plutonium doesn’t
emit enough neutrons when it isn’t being
fission by fast neutrons in order to continue
the conversion of future Uranium into Plutonium
to continue its breeding.
It has to be fissioned by fast neutrons in
order to do this.
On the other hand, Thorium and Uranium-233
produce enough neutrons in both thermal and
fast fission to continue the utilization of
that fuel.
I call it the Threshold of Two, and it's not
just about how many neutrons they emit, but
how many neutrons they emit even accounting
for absorption.
Because they don’t always fission every
single time they're hit by a neutron.
Uranium-233 and Plutonium-239 of those two
in thermal neutrons, only Uranium-233 crosses
the Threshold of Two.
In fast fission on the other hand, both Uranium-233
and Plutonium-239 crossed the Threshold of
Two.
So, it would seem, what we just want a fast
reactor.
We don’t want a reactor that uses slow down
thermal neutrons, we want a fast reactor because--then
we will great confidence that we will be able
to sustain the consumption of nuclear fuel.
Well, there's a powerful disincentive to doing
it this way and it has to do with what are
called, Cross-Sections.
These are mathematical way of describing how
likely it is that a nuclear reaction will
proceed and they the form of areas, quite
literally in area someone's called "a barn"
which is, 10 to the minus 24 square centimeters.
This is a really, really, really small unit
to variat.
But this is the unit that nuclear engineers
used to describe how probable a nuclear reaction
is.
This is the cross-section of Uranium-233 to
a thermal neutron.
By comparison, this very, very small circle
right here is the cross-section of Uranium
233 to a fast neutron.
So, it's not hard to see which one is more
likely to have a fission reaction.
A thermal neutron is far more likely to cause
the fission reaction than a fast neutron.
So, the advantage now seems to be for the
thermal reactors.
This is a general feature of almost all nuclear
materials that their cross-sections are much
larger to thermal neutrons than they are to
fast neutrons.
Here we see the cross-section of Plutonium.
It's huge in the thermal spectrum and it's
very, very small in the fast spectrum.
And that means that Plutonium is much more
likely to have a nuclear reaction to a slow
down neutron than to a fast neutron.
So again, why consider a fast reactor?
Well, it's because--look at these red regions.
Those regions indicate the probability that
the neutron will be absorbed but not cause
a fission, that it will simply just be absorbed.
You can see that, that probability is about
10% for Uranium-233 in the thermal.
But if we were to magnify that cross-section,
significantly by factor of 500, you could
see that, that probability becomes much smaller
in the fast spectrum.
A fast neutron if it is absorbed almost always
will cause a fission.
This is significant for Uranium-233 but it's
much more significant for Plutonium 239.
It will absorb a neutron about one-third of
the time and not cause a fission.
But in the fast spectrum, it will almost always
cause a fission.
So, to make sure that we cross that Threshold
of Two, it was necessary to build fast reactors
that would use Plutonium.
On the other hand, it was conceivable that
you could build thermal or fast reactors that
would use Uranium-233.
This uncertainty was not particularly appearing
at the time.
They wanted to move out in directions that
they felt very confident it.
So, the United States began to pursue a fast
breeder reactor.
In 1951, they build the experimental breeder
reactor one in Idaho.
This was a fast breeder reactor.
This was a reactor that was going to not slow
down neutrons but use fast neutrons to convert
Uranium into Plutonium and to breed from it.
This was actually the first reactor to generate
some power.
It lit four little light bulbs and ultimately
generated, I believe several hundred kilowatts
of power.
But it shows how early the United States was
moving out on the fast breeder reactor.
It was followed by the experimental breed
reactor number two, which was also a fast
breeder reactor much larger this time.
It made 62 megawatts of thermal power.
Industry got excited about the potential for
making breeder reactors.
This was actually a commercial reactor, The
Enrico Fermi Breeder Reactor in Monroe Michigan.
They began working on this reactor in 1957
and it achieved criticality in 1966.
But shortly after it achieved criticality,
they had a melt down at the Enrico Fermi Reactor
where the reactor was damaged and shut down.
At this time, Alvin Weinberg and his colleagues
at the Oak Ridge National Labs were working
on Molten-salt Reactors.
These were reactors that didn’t operate
in the fast spectrum.
They operate to slow down neutrons and they
predominantly were interested in using Thorium
and Uranium-233.
Weinberg wrote an introduction to a series
of papers that were published in a nuclear
journal in 1969.
And these are some of the words that he used
and I've always found it very interesting
how careful and measured he was with his utilization
of language.
Because he knew that most of the effort of
the country was on the fast breeder reactor
and very little in comparison was on the Molten-Salt
Reactor.
And he said, "The prevailing view holds that
the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor is the
proper path to ubiquitous permanent energy.
It is no secret that I, as well many of my
colleagues at Oak Ridge, have always felt
differently.
When the idea of the breeder was first suggested
in 1943, the rapid and the efficient recycle
of the partially spec core was regarded as
the main problem.
Nothing that has happened in the ensuing quarter
century has fundamentally changed this."
So, Weinberg begins to lay out the scenario
that physics hasn't changed and unless you
can rapidly reprocess nuclear fuel, you won't
be able to realize the benefits of the breeder
reactor.
He then goes on to offer an alternative to
the prevailing view.
The successful breeder will be the one that
can deal with the spent fuel or the spent
core most rationally either by achieving extremely
long burn up or by greatly simplifying the
entire recycle step.
We at Oak Ridge, have always been intrigued
by this latter possibility.
It explains our long commitment to liquid
fuel reactors, first, the Aqueous homogenous
and now the Molten-salt.
So, he presented a different scenario, how
they could use fluid field reactors to achieve
the overall goal of the efficient utilization
of nuclear fuel.
And the series of papers that followed in
this were some of the first discussions in
the nuclear literature about the potential
of the Molten-salt reactor.
It was not well-known.
The moneys that had been appropriated in order
to research the different breeder reactor
types are listed in this graph and I found
this graph, thanks to a book that had been
scanned into Google books.
Thanks.
So, project started by my good friend, Chris
Eucare here, so I greatly appreciate--this
is one of the many things I'm sure people
have done with your work.
Numbers are one thing, so I took it and threw
it in a spreadsheet and made a nice graph.
The red line shows the expenditures on the
fast breeder reactor, and this graph only
begin to 1968.
At that point, the United States had already
built several fast breeder reactors.
We're looking at 75 to nearly a hundred million
dollars in 1968.
It's very hard to see the green line for the
Molten-salt breeder reactor technology, it's
extremely low and then ultimately, it was
cancelled and briefly resurrected in 1975
and then cancelled again.
So, on a scale of the appropriations that
were made to the fast breeder reactor, you've
just about can't see the appropriations that
were made to the Molten-salt breeder reactor.
In June of 1971, President Richard Nixon made
a speech where he talked about the need for
the fast breeder reactor.
He put the United States on record that this
would be a top national goal.
Now, we don't have any video from the speech
he gave that day.
But later on in that day, he called Representative
Craig Hosmer from California to tell him about
the speech about the breeder reactor.
>> Yeah.
>> Calling for Craig Hosmer, sir.
Ready?
>> HOSMER: Oh.
>> NIXON: Okay.
>> HOSMER: Mister President?
>> NIXON: Since you missed our meeting when
we had--on a breeder reactor, you know...
>> HOSMER: Okay.
>> NIXON: ...I wanted you to know that we
sent a message today, Craig but then I just
told Zigler that--I told Zigler to tell the
press that there's a by part [INDISTINCT]
that you and [INDISTINCT]
>> HOSMER: All right.
>> NIXON: ...had been bugged me about it.
The one thing I wanted to tell you too is
that, I--Holified was there last night at
the [INDISTINCT] Club thing, and I--and I
have told the people around here--now, this
is got to be something we play very close
to the vest, but I'm being ruthless on one
thing, any activities that we possibly can,
should be placed in southern California in
this field.
And also, in the saline water field.
>> HOSMER: Correct.
>> NIXON: You know, we need the jobs.
We need to sum up those air passed workers.
Now, we got some--we're going to do a couple
of new things on water for example, and I
have decided to throw one big plant in southern
California.
I mean, you know, a big one of these implementing
it, if you know what I mean, is...
>> HOSMER: Right, right.
>> NIXON: ...it's just a question how big
the plant is.
But in this energy field, I told Dr. David
and of course, Seaborg and the rest that we
do it.
So, on the committee, everytime you have a
chance, needle them, say, "Where is this going
to be?"
Let's push the California thing.
Can you do that?
>> HOSMER: Incidentally, Mister President...
>> NIXON: Yeah.
>> HOSMER: ...I am so delighted that you released
$16 million on the improvement if the enriching
complex.
I bet that handles the bad...
>> NIXON: Right.
>> HOSMER: ...political problem for us.
>> NIXON: Right.
Good, good.
Well, they told me you were interested in
it, and I said, "Well, if Hosmer is for it,
I'm for it."
>> SORENSEN: All right.
Let's pause there.
You can tell just a little bit from listening
to Nixon's words that, the fast breeder reactor
was viewed by him and probably some others
in administration as something that they could
use to economic advantage for the people of
southern California to get it.
Nixon was from California, Hosman was from
southern California, Holifield, Chet Holified
who ran the--joined the committee on atomic
energy was also from California.
And I think some of the phrases in this--in
this phone call is very interesting.
I'm going to be ruthless on this.
We've got to play this very close to the vest.
It's about jobs, if you're for it, and I'm
for it.
It doesn't lead me to believe that the President
was seriously considering alternatives to
the fast breeder reactor.
Another past that could’ve been taken.
It was focused on what can we do right now
to get jobs back home to the--the folks are
going to support us in re-election.
Well a few months later, Nixon was at Hanford,
Washington which is the side of many of our
nations earliest nuclear energy facilities.
And he was also giving a talk on the significance
of the breeder reactor.
And again, note the economic potential that
he puts in front of people during his talk.
>> NIXON: That is why I made an announcement
on June the 4th, one that didn't get of course
the enormous publicity of the announcement
of the journey to China, one that didn't get
the publicity of my announcement of the economic
policy to deal with the problems of inflation
and unemployment in this country.
But one which in terms of the future of the
country maybe in long term, long range terms
even more important in some respects and that
is, at the United States was going to go forward
in building a breeder reactor.
Now, don't ask me what a breeder reactor is,
ask Dr. Slazenger, but don't tell, I'm not
to tell you because unless you're one of those
PHDs, you won't understand it either.
But what I do know is this, that here we have
the potentiality of holding a new breakthrough
and the development of power for peace, and
that means jobs, jobs for this area but jobs
and power for hundreds from millions of people
all over the world.
>> SORENSEN: Jobs, job is what it was all
about.
And this area that Nixon was talking to in
Hanford, Washington, this was a very well-educated
area.
A lot of the people in the back in there probably
had PHDs in nuclear engineering and knew exactly
what a breeder reactor was.
But Nixon was emphasizing the economic benefits
to them of his announcement that there was
going to be a breeder reactor.
>> NIXON: All of this business about breeder
reactors and nuclear energy and the stuff
is over my--that was one of my poorest subjects,
Science and I got through it, but I had to
work too hard.
I gave it up when I was about a sophomore.
>> SORENSEN: Well, maybe it might have benefited
our country a little more if Nixon had been
able to ascertain the different values of
different types of a breeder reactors and
why one might have an advantage over another.
But nevertheless, the US was now firmly on
the course of making the breeder reactor,
a national priority.
Nixon emphasized it in his State of the Union
Speech.
He then emphasized it in another message to
congress, the democratic and republic in party
platforms in 1972 both included the fast breeder
reactor as a national priority.
Now, this is about the time when Weinberg's
story with the Molten-salt reactor begins
to intersect this much larger story of the
breeder reactor and the congressional support
behind it as well as the presidential support.
Testimony given in September of 1972, they
noted that the US government would be expected
to cover cost overruns on the breeder reactor
and the development cost would go over $700,000,000.
At this point, industry had already committed
$200,000,000 then your dollars to the breeder
reactor effort.
Representative Craig Hosmer, who was the fellow
on the phone call that we heard earlier, said
that "If cost targets were missed, I for one
don't intend to scream and holler about it."
It's not hard to see that they could see great
economic benefits occurring to their area
of the country if the breeder reactor program
was to go forward.
In that same month, the atomic energy commission
issued WASH 1222, which was an evaluation
of Weinberg's Molten-salt breeder reactor.
It was highly critical of several technological
issues that had been encountered during the
development of that idea, more importantly
though, it almost completely ignored the safety
and economic improvements possible through
the use of the Molten-salt breeder reactor
technology.
Weinberg himself had a meeting which Chet
Holified and Milton Shaw of the Atomic energy
commission in 1972.
We don't know exactly when this meeting took
place.
Our only record of it is contained in Weinberg's
book, his autobiography, The First Nuclear.
Here's what he said, "I found myself increasingly
at odd with the reactor to the vision of the
Atomic energy commission.
The director at the time was Milton Shaw.
Milt was cut from the Rickover cloth, he had
a singleness of purpose and was prepared to
bend the rules and regulations in achievement
of his goal."
Why would he feel this pressure if he has
the president and these congressional folks
pushing for the fast breeder reactor?
"At the time, he became director, the atomic
energy commission had made the liquid-metal
fast breeder reactor, the primary goal of
it's reactor program.
Milt tackled the LMFBR project with Rickoverian
dedication: woe unto any who stood in his
way.
This caused problems for me since I was still
espousing the Molten-salt breeder."
Milt was like a bull, he enjoyed congressional
confidence so his position in the AEC was
unassailable.
And it was clear that he had little confidence
in me or Oak Ridge.
After all, we were pushing Molten-salt not
the fast breeder, more than that, we were
being troublesome over the question of reactor
safety.
And that was another aspect that was getting
Weinberg into trouble.
He had invented the pressurized light water
reactor that formed the backbone of the reactor
technologies that were being developed in
the country at that time.
Here's a picture of some of the pressurized
water reactors.
His work on the Thorium reactor led him to
believe that a significantly higher level
of safety was possible.
And this--in large part was because the Thorium
reactor operated low pressures whereas, water-cooled
reactors operated the high pressures.
So, he was beginning to bring these issues
up in support of the Thorium reactor, but
it didn't have that effect.
Congressman Chet Hollifield was clearly exasperated
with me and he finally blurted out, "Alvin,
if you're so concerned about the safety reactors,
then I think it might be time for you to leave
nuclear energy."
But I was speechless, but it was apparent
to me that my style, my attitude and my perception
of future were no longer in tune with the
powers within the AEC.
And I think this was a very sad moment in
the history of our country and probably in
the history of the world because an entire
direction of potential development was being
ended at that moment by a not well thought
out comment by Congressman Holifield, who
was very powerful.
Weinberg looked at this fairly philosophically
when he wrote his autobiography in 1994.
And He said, "I look back in these events,
I realize that leaving Oak Ridge was the best
thing that could have happened to me.
My views about nuclear energy were at variance
with those of the AEC congressional leadership.
After all, it was I who had called nuclear
energy a Faustian bargain, who continued to
promote the molten-salt breeder.
So, Weinberg's pursuit of Thorium appears
to have had a great deal to do with why he
was fired from his position at Oak Ridge in
the atomic energy commission.
And it's not hard to see when you stack up
the forces that weren't supportive of the
fast breeder and that effort, the money, the
industrial backing, the confidence they had
and here is Weinberg trying to push something
different, why they would attempt to truncate
his work.
The [INDISTINCT] that was in January of 1973,
Oak Ridge was directed by the atomic energy
commission to terminate the development of
the molten-salt reactor.
April of that year, Nixon went into reiterate
his commitment to the fast breeder, saying
it would extract 30 times more energy from
Uranium than light water reactors and it was
highest priority target for nuclear resear
and development.
We weren't the only ones pursuing the fast
breeder reactor.
In August 1973, the Phenix reactor in France
achieved critically.
So, we had real competition in this area and
I think it had something to do with the zeal
the United States felt to become preeminent
in this field.
But then something else happened in 1973 that
was far more significant.
The Yom Kippur war started, it led to the
OPEC oil Embargo.
Suddenly, the United States, their supply
of oil was cut back tremendously.
There were long lines, gas stations, people
were having to alternate days when they could
buy gas, people were--somebody's not able
to get to work, enormous amount of economic
activity which truncated.
Nixon felt great pressure so, he announced
project independence which was a plan to make
the United States energy independent by 1980.
This involved building many fast breeder reactors,
many conventional reactors, new oil drilling,
new refineries, new coalmines, all kinds of
things to make the United States independent
in energy supply.
He promoted these in talks before congress
but then in March of 1974, the oil Embargo
ended and pressure reduced to implement project
independence.
But something else happened that was very
significant in 1974.
India detonated a nuclear weapon that had
been built from Plutonium separated from natural
Uranium and a heavy water reactor.
This was a very significant event in the history
of how the United States approached nuclear
power because they became quite fearful, the
Plutonium that could be separated from Uranium
in reprocessing facilities would be able to
be used in a nuclear weapon.
And there are many arguments why that is not
feasible in conventional light water nuclear
reactors, but there are also other arguments
on how changes on how you would put fuel through
a reactor could lead to, so called Weapons
Grade Plutonium, rather than what we call,
Reactor Grade Plutonium which is not suitable
for nuclear weapons.
The entire fast breeder program was partially
built on the assumption that separated Plutonium
would be available from the light water reactors
that we had already built.
If we were able to take that Plutonium out,
we would be able to start these fast breeder
reactors because they required significantly
more nuclear fuel to turn them on than a light
water reactor did.
And that had to do with those relative cross-sections
I showed, how big the Plutonium cross-section
was in the thermal reactor versus how small
it was in the fast reactor.
That's why it takes so much more fuel to start
a fast breeder reactor for the same electrical
power rating than a thermal reactor.
Nixon resigned in 1974 and Gerald Ford became
the President.
He put some changes in place for the atomic
energy commission, splitting it into two new
divisions, the nuclear regulatory commission
and the energy research and development administration
which would go on to become the DOE.
The joint congressional committee in atomic
energy lead by Chet Holifield was abolished,
the balance of power which changed when Ford
came in, in 1974 and made these changes to
the AEC and to the congressional committee.
But Ford still supported the fast breeder
reactor.
He mentioned it in several of his speeches
including in State of the Union Address.
He increased funding for RND for the fast
breeder reactor.
And he highlighted how the fast breeder reactor
could be used to extend Uranium resources
for centuries.
As the 1976 election approached though, it
was very close between Jimmy Carter and Gerald
Ford.
Jimmy Carter wanted Uranium reprocessing to
be abolished.
He did not want it to take place.
Only about a week before the election, on
October 28th, 1976, Ford took Carter's position.
He said, "We are not going to reprocess Uranium
anymore.
We're not going to separate Plutonium," and
he highlighted the risk of proliferation as
one of the main reasons why he was making
this decision.
But it's almost certain that pressure from
Carter and an attempt to improve his potential
to win the 1976s election had to have something
to do with it.
At that time, the proposal was to build another
fast breeder reactor.
This time in Tennessee, very close to Oak
Ridge on the Clinch River, so this was the
proposal that was before the nation as Jimmy
Carter became the President in 1977.
And Carter was not a supporter of this fast
breeder reactor.
He considered that the fast breeder reactor
and its concentration had something to do
with the lack of technology development and
solar energy.
He blamed the focus that had been on the fast
breeder reactor.
He called our society a Plutonium society
that would use the fast breeder reactor.
In April, he reiterated Ford's ban on reprocessing.
So, not too much of a surprise, Ford had basically
assumed Carter's position, Carter's says,
"Yes, we will continue that as National Policy."
He also calls for a cut back and funding for
the Clinch River breeder reactor.
However, he announced a new energy plan, focused
less on petroleum and more on coal.
He said, "There's no need to enter the Plutonium
age by licensing or building a fast breeder
reactor such as the proposed demonstration
plan at Clinch River."
And again, he blamed the emphasis on the breeder
reactor for slow progress made in the progress
of solar power.
Surprisingly, Carter knew a thing or two about
Thorium.
And the reason he did is because at this time,
Admiral Rickover was working with his neighbor
reactors branch to load a Thorium Dioxide
Uranium-233 Dioxide core into the shipping
port reactor.
Carter was able to turn the switch that turned
the first and only Thorium breeder reactor
in US history on.
Several times he mentioned how--we wanted
to try other approaches to breeder reactors
than Plutonium, specifically light water breeder
reactors using Uranium.
But then, a meltdown happened a Three Mile
Island, public confidence in nuclear energy
in particular the light water reactor really
went down.
Even after Ronald Reagan was elected and lifted
the ban on commercial reprocessing, no reprocessing
plans were built.
In 1982, the shipping port reactor which had
been running for five years at this point
on the Thorium, Uranium-233 core were shut
down.
And when they examined the fuel, they found
that there was 1% more fuel in the reactor
than there was when they started.
This proved finally a Thorium breeder reactor
was possible in a thermal spectrum.
It had actually been done.
It wasn't a Thorium molten-salt reactor, but
it was a true Thorium breeder reactor.
Another consequence of the decision not to
reprocess nuclear fuel meant that we had to
have a new strategy for the long-term disposal
of Plutonium.
Previously had been assumed that Plutonium
from light water reactors would be sent to
fast breeder reactors but without that, we
need to know what to do.
And so President Reagan sign in the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act, which continues to be the
law of the land till this day, and led to
things like the [INDISTINCT] repository.
The funding that went into the fast breeder
reactor surprisingly peaked even after the
United States had made the decision not to
continue with reprocessing.
And even under the Carter years, from 1976
to 1980, you can see funding levels for the
fast breeder were very high.
So, this was a reactor type that dominated
the long range planning of the United States
for many, many years.
The atomic energy commission saw Plutonium
as a sure bet in the fast breeder.
It could cross the Threshold of Two.
There wasn't uncertainty there.
There was a degree of uncertainty with Thorium.
They invested early and heavily in the fast
breeder reactor, despite failures and meltdowns,
and industry got involved with hundreds of
millions of dollars of investment.
In 1971 Nixon, made this the US strategy,
how are we going to go forward?
It was going to be based around the fast breeder,
and shortly thereafter, Weinberg was fired
and the molten-salt reactor program was cancelled.
Before it cancelled the fuel processing program
and Carter extended that ban, without fuel
reprocessing, the fast breeder was not a viable
candidate anymore.
And nobody as far as we know in DC ever revisited
the question of, "Was it a mistake to cancel
the molten-salt reactor effort?"
Should we have gone back and said, "You know,
now that we're not going to do the fast breeder,
maybe we should've done the molten-salt breeder
reactor."
In all of my studies, I have not been able
to find any indication that, that ever took
place, that there was a true revisiting of
that decision to shut down and a rethinking.
The team that worked on this at Oak Ridge
disbanded and dispersed.
And over the decades that fall the notch was
totally forgotten.
So now, here we are in 2011 asking, "Why is
now the right time for the Liquid Fluoride
Thorium Reactor, which is the modern form
of the Thorium molten-salt reactor originally
proposed?"
We know that we need much more energy at much
lower prices.
And we have to do this with a much lower impact
on the earth's environment.
We know that we're facing severe challenges
from global climate change, melting of glaciers,
rising sea levels, changing weather patterns.
We need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide
we're putting into the atmosphere dramatically.
There's tremendous uncertainty amongst the
public about nuclear power because of the
events of Akushima Daichi, even though no
one was killed there.
The coverage and the tone that it took has
made people question the safety of nuclear
power, primarily the light water reactor to
be able to have a different technology that
doesn't have some of the risks of operating
high pressure fluids and reactors that have
the capability to have meltdowns.
It's significant.
Our alternatives in the form of fossil fuel
caused tremendous environmental degradation,
not just in mining and processing, but also
to our atmosphere, transporting these fuels.
It's not cheap to build electrical power transmission
lines either.
So, even if we wanted to build renewable energy
sources dispersed in a wide variety of places,
they would face challenges in order to get
transmission lines built from here to there.
To give you an idea of just some of the things
we do in our high-tech online society today,
this is a picture of a data center for Facebook
that has been built just a hundred miles south
of the Arctic Circle in Sweden.
It consumes a hundred and twenty megawatts
of hydro power, has 14 backup diesel generators
to provide 40 megawatts of emergency power.
It costs $760,000,000.
This is one of the largest solar installations
in the world.
It's sited on a hundred and eighty-five hectares
of land.
It provides 20 megawatts of peak energy for
15 hours a day at $420,000,000, or about $33
a watt.
That's six to seven times what it cost to
put other power transmission in.
So, this is in Spain and the data center is
in Sweden.
So, here is an example of a customer that
has a dense power demand that wants continuous
power, no interruptions and it's in frozen
Sweden and here is a diffused power supply
in Spain.
So, to run this building of those solar power
systems, we'll need at least six, but we need
more because these plants can only provide
power for 15 hours a day.
So, we'll need probably 10 or more of these
sites to run one of these data centers.
Plus, we'll need intercontinental transmission
lines to get power from a place like Spain,
that's nice and sunny, to a place like Sweden
that's frozen.
Is this what's going to happen?
Probably not, probably what will happen is
something more like this, where a dense power
supply in the form of coal.
This is the prettiest coal plant I've ever
seen in my life.
This is in Germany.
But it provides 1600 megawatts of continuous
power by burning lignite coal.
Look at that, we could run 13 of those data
centers with one of these coal plants.
Sounds great right?
Well unless you're the environment.
If we try to use expensive intermittent and
alternative energy, it's not going to be the
answer.
Most populations, most people on earth can't
afford unsubsidized alternative energy.
It's just too expensive.
What they'll go towards is cheap, reliable,
dirty energy.
That's not a viable answer for the world either.
But it's the one that will be taken because
most people don't have alternatives.
We believe natural, inexpensive, and abundant
Thorium is the answer.
This is the material that is dense enough
and reliable enough to provide the energy
that the world needs, but the machine to make
it work is the key.
Why molten-salt?
Because molten-salt is the only one of the
four potential coolants in the reactor that
can run at both high temperature and low pressure.
It also has a remarkable feature because of
the properties of molten-salt.
In the event of an emergency, the fuel could
be drained into a passively safe, passively
cool configuration.
This is something that you can't do with a
solid-fueled reactor.
Finally, the advantages of the molten-salt
reactor are significant, inherent passive
safety through having fluid fuel and operating
at low pressure.
You can operate at high temperatures, which
means you can get high thermodynamic efficiencies.
Your fuel preparation costs are very low and
there's no fuel fabrication cost.
Fluorides also tried to be an excellent chemistry
match with Uranium Thorium Fuel Cycle.
They're chemically stable and they're impervious
to radiation damage.
That enables us to achieve unlimited fuel
burn up and continuous recycling of the material
from core to blanket.
Uranium-233 is highly unsuitable for weapons
diversion because of contamination with Uranium-232.
And it's easy to down blend it in an emergency.
Now, we do have challenges.
These salts could be aggressive towards most
metal construction materials.
It requires special materials to avoid being
corroded by the salt.
High temperature operation is also both a
blessing and a challenge.
But I think the fact that the technology base
is largely stagnated for 40 years is our single
greatest challenge towards going forward,
and also the unknown nature of this within
the nuclear community.
It's very different than what we do today
with water cooled Uranium fueled reactors.
They are the basis for today's regulatory
environment.
And so, there will be a great deal of education
needed for this technology to go forward.
But I think it has great potential because
of these attributes.
And five energy aspires to be the world leader
in the design, development, and manufacture
of these liquid fluoride Thorium reactors.
Thank you very much.
