>> Welcome everybody.
I'm going to be--try to be short because we're
running a little bit late and then there is
a talk after us.
So, today we're going to have a talk about,
I don't know, alternative energy.
I think it's important.
I think if we really want to make a denting
CO2, we need to be looking at some serious
stuff as well.
And for this purpose, we have today Dr. Joe
Bonometti and he is a NASA Chair Professorship--he
had a NASA Chair Professorship position at
the Naval Post graduate School.
He worked at NASA for 10 years as a technology
manager, lead systems engineer, nuclear specialist
and propulsion researcher.
He's basically a rocket sciences guy.
He--their manage--manage the Emerging Propulsion
Technology Area for in-space systems, the
Marshall Aero launch team, as well as a variety
of auto power and propulsion assignments.
After rendering a doctorate degree in mechanical
engineering from University Of Alabama in
Huntsville, he spent several years as a research
scientist and senior research engineer at
the UAH Propulsion Result--Research Center,
where he served as a principal investigator
and manager for the Solar Thermal Laboratory.
He has worked as a senior mechanical designer
at Pratt & Whitney supporting aircraft engine
manufacturing at--and at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory within the Laser Fusion
program.
He's a graduate from the United States Military
Academy.
I think you'll find out that he knows what
he is talking about and I am eager to hear
what he has to say.
So, please give him a warm welcome.
Thank you.
>> BONOMETTI: Thank you.
That was a great introduction.
It's a blessing to be here.
I have a lot of material to go over so I'm
going to suspend some of my normal comments
and jokes and go right to it.
I planned to be talking about this in context
of fusion but I'm going to hold back some
comments for there to get through the material
and get to the questions.
One note in the beginning, I come here as
an individual.
I don't represent any agency or organization.
There's a loose fitting group of people around
the country mainly specialist, technologist.
They're interested in this field; both in
energy and in particular thorium and that
we all have day jobs, fortunately good paying
day jobs for the most part.
And so, we come to give this information out
freely and examine this idea and the use of
thorium as an energy source.
Outline; I'm just going to mention that I
talk about systems engineering because I've
taught that as well as my thermodynamics and
nuclear background.
You only see a little bit there of that.
Some assumptions; I'm assuming that most people
understand the energy crisis.
It's global in nature, it's--nobody's got
a quick fix, at least nobody would agree what
the quick fix is.
Thorium is not going to be commonly known
especially as an energy source.
Increased electrical capacity is very important
to the overall energy consumption.
And the last thing is, energy equates the
state or the standard of living and one of
the last green energy forums I was at listening
to, they equated 258 slaves if you will working
full time and hard labor, 365 days a year
for each person in the United States.
You can see that that level of energy is what
gives us a standard of living.
This slide comes from Lawrence Livemore Laboratories.
It's one that I would spend a long time on.
I think it has a lot of great points to be
made.
I just say that if you don't know what quad
is 10th of the 9th, BTUs.
It's a lot of blot of energy and if you just
take all the energy we have in the United
States and break it up into 100, you get 100%.
So you can see, oil is around 40% and that
line is the thickness--equivalent to that.
You can see that most people would say we
want to increase these desirables, okay.
And notice that the desirables are pretty
thin and it's kind of hard to increase them.
These are the ones we would probably want
to phase out more as well as less oil.
We have huge energy losses and electricity
production, about 25% efficient overall.
Conservation is great, we do it at home.
Mostly engineers, if they don't have to create
any entropy increase percent in the universe;
they would like to minimize that.
But at the same token, you can see that we've
paid the price up here.
And that conservation as much as we want to,
there's not a whole lot of gains there, in
these two areas.
The other thing is, if you notice right here,
you can't make that line go to zero.
Thermodynamics says you always have to have
a cold sink.
You always have to move energy.
One example I talk about is wind; that you
can put up a windmill and you can put another
windmill behind it and you're going to extract
a little more energy and slow that air down
but there's a fundamental limit.
If you put too many of them in there, you'll
not only get the last one to not move because
there's no air flow, okay, you've actually
affected all the windmills in front of it,
until you get no energy.
So, there's a fundamental limits to thermodynamics.
You always have to have some lost there.
And of course, most people would consider
that you want to increase the electricity
flow into cars or transportation areas as
well.
So, what you really want to do is, if you
can't roll these things fast enough on the
order of this size, you really want some new
energy source, something big, something, you
know, it comes in, it can be readily built
and provide that very big, wide line.
Something like fusion, right?
Everybody would like to see that.
Well, I'm here to talk about thorium and whether
thorium can be that line.
And also, what's the best way to extract that
energy?
Now, we're now getting to--go out of details,
you can take a little bit of thorium, put
it in a normal reactor and you get some benefits
out of it, okay.
But it's not an end-all and it doesn't extract
all the energy out of that thorium that you'd
like to and it doesn't mitigate all the problems
you have with today's nuclear power.
Thorium; just for background, is an element.
1828, it was discovered.
It is slightly radioactive.
It got a very long half-life, that's why it's
around and it provides real background radiation
along with uranium, most of it comes from
that.
Just a little bit of thorium that's always
around in the soil and in rocks and minerals.
The only thing I'm going to say here is that
thorium is not really commercially used for
anything of much these days.
It is a metal.
It's got a very wide liquid range, some other
interesting properties.
I'm not going to go into any other details
to know that--commercially, it's not a big
deal.
Now, this is a log scale of what's available
in the Earth's crust and you see that the
beginning, you have oxygen, silicone, aluminum.
Down here, at a 100 parts per million, in
this box here, you have copper in the middle
and at--towards the bottom, you got lead and
thorium.
And you can see I expanded this little area
out.
Uranium is about four times less than thorium.
Boron, which some talks have a--even at Google,
we've talked about fusion using boron, all
right.
It's there.
It's readily available but what's interesting
is the uranium that you're really interested,
the one fissile material, it actually split,
is way down here, orders of magnitude less.
So, thorium, on theory--theoretical basis;
the United States has about 20 % of the world's
reserves.
To put this in perspective, one would say,
if you replaced all the energy--electrical
energy generation in the United States that
you saw before and I'm not suggesting we do
that.
A lot of other energy sources will play but
that's about 400 metric tons.
One mine can produce about 40--500 metric
tons per year, you can see that's 10 times
the amount.
The United States has actually--the government
has buried a bunch of thorium.
They didn't know what to do with it.
After paying for it and storing it, they just
put it in the ground literally in these casts.
And you can imagine that's--even at this--huge
amount energy usage that last 8 to 10 years.
In a practical sense, this would last us probably
25 to 50 years.
And you've certainly have plenty of thorium
available around the world.
That's not enough.
Like fusion, we can go to moon.
The difference is there, we don't have to
mine the entire surface looking for it.
Thorium gives a nice signal and you can detect
that from space and so we can map it and where
the hotspots are, you know that there's a
pretty good thorium deposit there, same with
Mars.
So, we know that it's out there and the asteroids,
thousands of years worth of power.
Now, because of my systems engineering background,
a little bit of the flavor I'm going to give
you is in the vain of how do you select things
or systems engineering criteria.
And this comes from the aerospace that about
80% of a projects life cost and benefits are
going to be locked in the first initial decisions
you make.
And that pretty much for all technologies
especially hi-tech technologies; that holds
pretty well true, 70%-90%, somewhere in there.
And the reason is that it sets your theoretical
limits, it also--at the time, you have your
least real world knowledge of how you're going
to build or how you're going to go about doing
this project.
So you--the thing I try to teach is you look
for the inherent balances, something untouchable,
at least--reasonably untouchable and a growth
factor that your concept will gain and exceed
what your goals are.
So let's take nuclear technology that we see
today.
You know list the pros and cons that are shown
here.
Most people recently have looked at, you know,
no green house emissions and that's because
in this case, about 3rd comes from electricity
and before majority of that is coal.
Nuclear doesn't have that.
Now, to be very honest, one would have--and
analyze, well, how much resources does all
this make when I go to build a plant and how
much CO2 do I produce?
In the case of a nuclear energy, there is
some but over the lifetime and the amount
of energy a nuclear plant produces, this is
probably--pretty a fair game to say it produces
no CO2, but it's something you need to be
honest about and compare.
What if you can take some of the cons out
of there, the safety fears and long term sustainability
and terrorist or proliferation issues and
make them go away or at least minimize them.
It sounds like what fusion wants.
Another thing on systems engineering is the
concept of power density and efficiency.
I can't go through all these but obviously
land usage, you know, the maintenance cost,
anything that you have to deal with, the overall
cost of a lifetime a project--smaller is not
just convenient.
It drives--90% of the time, it drives the
cost and therefore--at least, the social cost,
maybe not in a particular market but across
the board, it usually does.
And you'll see that that's very important
for power density and efficiency.
And example that comes into mind is the cost
material labor and then the distance from
the end user, and all these other factors
that factor in.
I'm not going to go into a big detail.
This is, you know, information that's available
and have been readily been talked about.
Natural gas turbine engines is about one-tenth
the amount of steel for example in a nuclear
plant and a nuclear plant is actually pretty
good compared to some of the others.
But you see that in recent years, what are
we building?
We're building these very expensive, difficult
gas using machines that are very hi-tech,
yet we're building more of those.
Why?
Well, because overall, the resources necessary
to produce that and to meet the demand now
makes you go for these things.
And that's what--that what's been happening.
So, in the light of the--what fusion wanted
to be; safe, proliferation resist, et cetera.
That was one of the jokes.
Today, we have basically large plants although
there were a couple of Google talks that's
talking about making fusion in a way that's
smaller.
I would love that to happen but basically,
we've got these very large plants and of course
they use a lot of it--they produce a lot of
energy but they also absorb a lot of energy
in producing the energy.
So your net gain is not as good as you would
want.
Kind of get into the history as well as the
physics at the same time and talk you through
a little bit about thorium and why we ended
up with a--the LFTR concept.
Three basic nuclear fuels everybody should
know, you know, uranium-235 is what's naturally
found, that's what we can start with.
These two have to come from fertile material,
we have to make them, they aren't found in
nature.
And in history, everybody was working on weapons
and so you have an enrichment facility, you
need a weapon designed, you need fabrication
techniques.
For the uranium-238, you need a neutron source
which also usually starts with the uranium-235.
You chemical separate, you need a new weapon
design, new fabricating techniques, you get
a slightly better bomb, so I'll say on that.
And thorium, well, they discovered, you need
the same thing you need with the uranium-238,
chemical separation, but then there's some
contaminant in this usually and which should
go to an enrichment facility but it's a hot
enrichment facility.
You need yet a new weapon design, a new fabrication
techniques to get the same kind of bomb.
Well, obviously, these two are what the world
has shows in the --to work on.
Well, at the same time, most of the people
that worked on those projects also were good
people trying to say, "What good can we do
besides weapons?"
An electricity production was one of them
early on and they had the same problem.
They had the same materials to start with.
You need enrichment or heavy water production,
a new--a fuel design, okay.
A little bit different--but it's still solid
fuel, fabrication and then electrical power.
I say short-term electrical power because
at the time, they really underestimated how
much uranium-235 was in the world.
It was a little bit more than they actually
are accounting for originally.
But at world usage at the U.S. levels, it's
still a very true statement to say, you know,
there will be peak uranium if you--if you
base everything on uranium-235.
Well, you can go with breeders; fast spectrum
breeder reactor, you need some sophisticated
controls.
We'll talk about that in little bit more.
Some fuel design and you get electrical power
but you also get a whole lot more production
of plutonium which has been used for nuclear
power and run other reactors produce electricity
or of course, you can use that for weapons.
Thorium, on the other hand looks a little
different at each time.
Thermal spectrum, chemical processing and
you get electrical power, it's very hard to
get any extra out of it and I'll explain that
here.
Enrico Fermi argued for the plutonium-based
economy essentially.
And one of the reasons, you get three neutrons
on average per fission and the real key number
you want to look at is this blue line and
that is the number of neutrons that come for
absorption and you need at least two.
You need one to spilt, and one to breed your
next fuel.
And so, in reality, you need a little bit
more than that because losses through the
reactor, you got to make it reasonable.
So you have to work this thing, it doesn't
work here at all in thermal spectrum, you
have to work up here in the--near the--what
I would call the bomb spectrum, okay.
You're using now the fast neutrons coming
off the reactor from the fission.
You're not slowing them down in a thermal--in
a thermal sense.
And you can see that this number really climbs
very good, which means you get a whole lot
more than two, which means you get production
of plutonium or you can use it for production
of plutonium.
Well, Eugene Wigner at the time argued, "Well,
you know, it's great for weapons but we really
want to base our economy on thorium."
It's more available and more important.
It runs on a neutron spectrum--a thermal spectrum
such that it's a lot safer, a lot easier to
control and you can, you know, use these reactors.
It is--this is a very difficult reactor, very
touchy reactor to work.
But of course, it doesn't produce much because
you see the average from the fission is only
two and a half and the actual absorption averages
a little bit below that, okay.
So you're above two which is enough, but with
real, real losses, you're not going to breed
a whole lot of extra material out of this--out
of this system.
Well, historically, what did we do?
We went from weapons to--they're not on the
list.
There is Eisenhower's Atoms-For-Peace program
which is trying to say, well, we've spent
all this money, we want to look a little bit
better in the eyes of the world.
Let's produce electricity.
But you're using the same infrastructures,
the same people, the same needs and desires
you poured into here to--Shippingport was
our first electrical plant and sure enough,
that is the base product for our surface ships.
So, a little bit of entangled there, it wasn't
exactly Atoms-For-Peace and a conventional
sense of what's the best way to produce electricity.
Well, is that a good or bad decision?
Well, I'm not sure I want to sit here and
debate that but, you know, at the time, urgency
of war, the fact that the weapons were unsophisticated
designs, you needed a lot of material for
it, the delivery systems were horrible, okay.
And so, you needed a large number to be a
credible defense, safety environment; those
kinds of things weren't considered as much.
Compared to today, obviously, the very efficient
designs ICBMs are highly accurate, they need
to scale down.
We almost have too much material for weapons.
And of course, safety environment proliferation
issues are [INDISTINCT] concerns.
Maybe it was right then, maybe wrong today,
people can decide that.
Well, in the tale of the nuclear reactor thorium,
engineers don't want to give up.
When they see a good idea, they dog it, even
though programmatically and the money and
the funding was completely cut off, they went
around and said, "Look, air force, you don't--you
don't have ICBMs yet.
You need a credible defense to get your weapons
out there, something that could fly a long
time, how about this nuclear airplane?"
Now, the only way that this would ever do
in a normal reactor is if you have a liquid
reactor.
And so, they started a program, they sold
air force on it as crazy it is.
And I understand that somebody recently has
said something in England, I believe about
this.
I would not like to see nuclear airplanes
as our base of commercial flight.
I can talk about that at some other time for
the reasons for that.
When this reactor program started out, they
did 100 hours, a high temperature.
I believe that maybe the--still a record certainly
for the overall reactor running that long,
that hot and that's 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit,
very much hotter than most reactors can run.
Two things that came out of this, one the
fission products were naturally removed as
you were pumping at it, which was really nice,
to get rid of the poisons.
And two, the load-following capability which
was essential for the airplane application--in
fact that you wanted to throttle something
without control rods have instant response
from the reactor and then throttle back if
you needed to, to get your power.
This reactor in the fluid method was able
to do that on con--unlike on conventional
or conventional reactors.
Well, that program died pretty quickly as
soon as the air force realized they could
do the job much better with missiles.
A missile program was--went full ahead and
that one was cancelled.
The engineers still wouldn't give up, okay.
They [INDISTINCT] down in--or Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in a small program but they ran
a small program from '65 to 1969.
And the main thing I'll say about this--we're
not going to go to the great details of molten
salt reactor Experiment was affected.
They ran it 24 hours a day, three shifts everyday
but nobody wanted--none of the engineers wanted
to stay for the weekend.
So, they shut it down on Friday night and
they started it up regularly on Monday morning.
Something that's totally, you know, not even
thought about today in nuclear power plants.
It is a base load, when it goes down, it goes
down for a long time, you don't get to restart
it.
The end result today, most people think of
molten salt as this gigantic reactor, something
very large.
They even have some control rods that's so
large.
Single fluid which means your thorium is thrown
in with the uranium in the reactor itself.
And you do--you do have a processing system;
you have a freeze plug which I'll show a little
bit later and you have this Brayton Closed-Cycle
Turbine System unlike steam that is an advantage
to this idea.
Well, if this was so good and the common question
is why wasn't it done?
Well, hopefully I kind of hinted at that along
the way the establishment on the plutonium
industry and the needs there.
The fact that this is a liquid system, it's
daunting, it's different than just nuclear
energy, it's a lot of chemistry involved,
there's an existing mindset that had to be
broken.
And Dr. Weinberg who also hones the patents
for the reactors we have today, who helped
basically train Admiral Rickover and suggested
what the reactor for the Nautilus, was.
He was hoping that this reactor which he worked
on for a long time would be the eventual power
reactor technology that would use for electricity.
Another person--his memoirs, deputy director
at Oak Ridge also pointed out that it was
an Oak Ridge project and therefore, it was
considered just their own pet project and
it was very hard to break out of that mold.
Again, the existing bureaucracy--I've heard
a lot of talks on the fusion as well, the
same kind of mindset we are trying to break,
what the common large program has in the government.
All right, why is it so different?
Liquid core, I mentioned that and the fact
that it is thorium and that you have this
chemical processing system.
And you can see at room temperature--this
is a crystal, it is a salt and when you heat
it up, it becomes a liquid, a little bit thicker
than water, you can pop it around.
Last thing on the history, Admiral Rickover
in his program, he managed to put together
a gigantic organization to build not only
the Nautilus but the whole nuclear navy and
it stands today.
He's done a very good job as far as establishing
safety record and the navy is excellent in
that but understand--inherently, it's not
found in the reactor.
It's found in the very strict rules, the blind
obedience, the very well-trained--long-trained
process that you have to do with the sailors
that run these reactors.
So here's the path that we've taken, the typical
nuclear reactor with this giant vessel and
the question is have we made the best decision
then or are we making the best decision now?
And I'm going to--then propose that LFTR is
something that is what fusion promises.
Some technical details; LFTR is a technology
or architecture of a technology, I should
say, it's not a specific design but it has
certain design characteristics.
Two fluids, the fact it's atmospheric pressure,
very low pressure on the vessel.
It's going to be high-temperature.
It's going to have chemical extraction; I'll
explain why that's necessary, thermal spectrum
and then the Closed-Cycle Brayton System instead
of steam.
The reason why you have--this is the chart
of the nuclides--the reason why we have to
have extraction is that thorium with the--this
is protons 90, it absorbs the neutron, it
becomes thorium 233 which beta decay on 22
and a half minutes.
Everybody knows what beta decay is--goes to
protactinium.
Protactinium, 27 days half-life, it also beta
decays and becomes your fissile fuel.
Uranium-233, that's what you'd want to get
in your reactor fuel.
Now what if we leave the thorium--I mean the
protactinium in the reactor, this is what
happens.
You get the same beginning, you get thorium
beta decaying the protactinium but now you
have the problem of absorbing a second neutron
which is fairly highly likely.
And seven and a half hour--or seven hour--or
half-life, it will also beta decay to uranium-234
which is not fissile.
Now, you could absorb yet another neutron
here and jump to 235 and with another neutron
split the 235 but obviously, that chain is
using way too many neutrons and the reactor
would stop under that--on those conditions.
And there's all this probabilities of how
much absorption and there are other decay
methods that you have to take into account.
So, that's the main reason why you want to
take out the protactinium out of the reactor.
So, the architecture for LFTR starts out with
the minimum core of fissile material that's
hot.
The four corners just kind of remind you of
the--the basic print is what are you trying
to--the goals you're trying to get to which
is a safe compact reactor, something that--proliferation-resistant,
waste reduction, covers that amount of electricity
you need, that great big blue line and do
it quickly as well as cost-effective being--effective
connecting to the grid.
So, the core is just hot, you can pump in
and out, drives the turbines, you understand
that.
The blanket around it reflects the neutrons
back in or the thorium that's in the blanket
absorbs and becomes your protactinium.
You have to take out the protactinium, there
is the chemistry and let it decay and then
that produces the U233.
And you can actually extract the products--the
fission products and other things out of the
reactor as it's running in this liquid state.
Look at the inherent advantage, this is against,
systems engineering, everybody has desired
goals and you kind of just specifically list,
well, what are those goals were, the cost.
Well, it's a low fuel price, low capital cost,
long life, low maintenance so those kinds
of things--transportation.
You break all those down and you trace out
what your inherent properties are to those
and you see whether they're--you're matching
up or you're getting what you really want
to.
So, if we pick a couple of these, here's liquid
core, you've got homogeneous mixing which
means you don't have any hot spots, which
is a real concern in conventional reactors.
If one spot gets hotter and it continues to
get hotter until you have to melt them.
You get to burn up all the fuel because it's
constantly being moved around in the reactor
and no fuel shut down because you can fuel
this continuously.
The expandability of the fluid gives you a
large negative temperature coefficient which
is where your safety is at.
No separate cooling system, that's one less
system and the big thing is the safety; the
fact that if you're--there is no coolant to
get rid off in order to have a meltdown or
a problem.
And of course, drainable, you know, I'll give
you an example of that.
If you have this very small reactor core and
you leave a tube out there and this is very
hot liquid--as long as you keep that at room
temperature by blowing some air across it
or in this case, helium--forced helium tubes,
that salt will freeze.
It'll make a plug, if you got a crack in this
thing, actually it will actually leak out
and probably seal itself, okay, depending
how the design of this is.
But the point is if you lose power, if anything
happens; somebody throw a grenade in this
thing this--or this gets hot, too hot for
any reason, that plug will always melt and
drain into a passive pan which is going to
hold the heat and then the radiation.
If everything is okay, you just heat it back
up or even turn it right back on and if it's
liquid state, it takes a little while for
that heat to dissipate and you can pump it
back in to start up.
So, instead of being like really cautious
about shutting down your reactor because you'll
black out half the neighborhood or whatever
and take days or months, if not years to restart,
you can go ahead and shut things down and
go, "It was just a mistake."
And immediately go back on line.
So, actually there's inherent safety in there
because you could use your safety system all
the time.
Actually, I need to go back.
All right.
Thorium advantages here, that it was abundant,
I mentioned that and the fact that it's not
fissile, okay, it means it's not weapons usefulness
in which case the less terrorist interest
again goes to cost and safety, security, can't
explode.
Look at the uranium cycle compared to the
thorium cycle, you start out with a whole
lot more mining with the uranium cycle, you
have a whole lot of yellow cake that you make,
everybody recognize that but then you got
to enrich that and then make these pellets.
It's a very expensive process; the security
to do this process is very expensive much
less the actual process.
You end up with a whole bunch of depleted
uranium, it's still useful in some ways and
not useful in others so I don't know what
people were doing with that other than letting
it sit on the ground, it doesn't go to Yoko
Mountain.
You need a very big plant, as you saw before,
you--a very large reactor with a vessel that
can hold a ball of steam or any explosion
that can happen here because of the very high
pressure.
Big turbine plant next to it and you produce
a whole lot of spent fuel and you need Yoko
Mountain for 10,000 years.
The thorium cycle, you need one ton, this
is for the same amount of energy, one giga
watt for one year and much more plant, low
pressure, the Brayton's are much smaller,
much more efficient as much as 50% efficient
or better compared to about 35% best you can
do for steam, one ton of fission products.
But the big deal here is that in--within 10
years, most of that, 83% is going to be backed
down to safe radio--background levels, which
means you can take those products which actually
were produced in the reactor, there's some
very interesting things you can get out of
that and you'd sell some high quality materials.
And the remainder only needs 300 years approximately
for storage, which you can imagine that--the
finding a many places around the world that
can handle that and you can imagine making
storage vessels that are, you know, casts
that can last 300 years.
Well, proliferation risk; one of the things
that happened with this particular process
with the LFTR processes as we see it, there's
going to be a little contamination of uranium-232,
you just can't help it, I'll show you that
in minute.
And it has a decay chain; it gets you down
to thalium-208 which has a hard gamma emitter
which makes it a very nasty stuff to deal
with.
This is where the uranium gets in--the 232
becomes.
There are certain reactions that can happen.
I don't have time to go through the details.
If you have 1% of uranium-232 in the material
and you're holding it, you have about three--or
three minutes, I believe--well, less than
three minutes before you get your full five
rem dose which is considered, you know, your
top level.
I think it's within a half in it--no, within--yeah,
half an hour.
You're feeling the effects of radiation poisoning
and a couple--and within two hours, you're
probably likely to die.
So, it's very hard to handle, it also means
separation of a nation who wanted to use this
as a material for weapons, it would be a hot
enrichment environment to deal with.
The radiation hurts the electronics as well
as the explosive material within the weapon
so they don't shift--they do not--their long--not
very long half-life as far as the shelf life
of the reactor--of the bombs, so.
Okay.
On the fluoride salt itself, ionic chemical
stability is very important.
I'll show that in a minute.
The fact that it's very high temperature and
a little vapor pressure means you run very
high temperatures.
And again, each one of these things room set,
temperature solid, like I explained before
leak resistance, et cetera.
So, look at the radiation damage in a conventional
nuclear reactor.
It's going to have cladding, all the temperature
and heat is built up within that cladding
and that cladding can't break.
So--or you lose the noble gases, the krypton
and other things that were radioactive.
And so, you end up having to pull out this
core all the time and not burn up all the
fuel because there's physical damage being
done to the solid, where is if it's ionically-bonded
in a liquid, the ionic bonds don't care.
They're going to move around as they need
to and reassemble and you always have that
ability to withstand a lot of punishment in
the reactor.
Another point of this is that the salt are
actually very low corrosion and the way to
briefly demonstrate that, here is a typical
salt in the reactor and the larger the number,
the better minus 104 and this the freeb--free
energy--Gibbs free energy here.
A chemist will say you need a difference of
20 between it and let's say a wall material,
or a vessel material such as--here's iron
and you can see that's about double the difference
between those two.
So, it's pretty chemically stable, considered
almost a noble chemical reaction in the reactor.
Internal processing; we have minimal, physical--inventories
so if the reactor is small, there is no fuel
fabrication, obviously that drives a lot of
your cost and the big thing is you can extract
both poisons and valuable materials out of
the reactor.
This is a little more detailed than the one
I had before.
What you're doing is you're pumping out of
the core and your fluoride--just fluoride
gas through the salt and all the uranium products
are going to come out as uranium hexafluoride,
which means it's a gas and you pull it out
and it re-introduce any uranium that it has
not burned into the reactor.
The rest of the salt goes through, you get
back some distillation, get out the fission
products and what's left here is you can separate
this.
And this will probably take an economic analysis
of how much time and effort would you do to
separate these things.
You do need a central location plant where
you take little bottles every once in awhile
out and centrally process or do you incorporate
it like you do the actual breathing process
within the reactor itself?
This would all be self-contained in a reactor
vessel.
The blanket on the other hand comes out and
I'd like to think that is a--it's a reactive
extraction column--if a chemist--it's like
a catalyst.
But they say that's a bad word so don't use
it.
For me, it's a catalyst in nature.
In fact, that you put in the thorium appear
and the thorium will go back into the blanket
salt and replace the protactinium which can
be extracted out and put in the decayed tank.
Same thing here, you just flow gas through
that, fluoride gas, all the uranium that's
produced, whenever it's produced is able to
be put in--back into the salt and back into
the core.
And very quickly on the Closed-Cycle Brayton,
just to say that this could be air cooled,
heat rejection as wall as verbal impact pressure
allows you to play with the size and the efficiency
of the system.
And this just shows--this is the advanced
boiling water reactor typically looked at.
And again, a very large building, no matter
how you do these things, the LFTR concept
would be very much smaller, the whole reactor
core would be something that size with the
entire Brayton system not much bigger.
And it just shows again the difference in
size of a comparison of a Brayton system versus
steam plant and some of the listing of reasons
why you would think that the cost of this
whole system would be significantly less than
existing nuclear power plants.
Okay.
Well, the disadvantages, I think I explained
some of these.
It's unknown; it's going to be different from
what the existing infrastructure is going
to support.
It does need a charge of uranium-233 or some
other fissile material but we suggest doing
that because it keeps it--the whole reactor
clean.
And here's a comparison--basically, I've covered
most of these, everything from the waist--relative
waist 130th, 10,000 years versus 300 years,
the fact that you can burn almost 100% versus
1% and the best reactors are planning a couple
of percent maybe, two or three of the total
fuel usage, as well as being higher efficiency,
lower pressure, air, water cooled.
And in unique applications, this should scale
down as well as scale up if you want to make
large plants but it also could spill onto
the back of a semi-trailer, that size typical.
It would obviously be very advantage to the
navy because even in their smaller vessels,
they can't build these--their existing reactors
to fit into the [INDISTINCT] ships that they
have.
We like to talk about submerged units because
they're really not seen.
They put them in rivers and they're very small,
very invulnerable to attack or other things.
And then if you really want to use other processes,
high temperature directly from the reactors,
it's very useful for--one is mobile.
It can go to a site for shell oil extraction.
It's--it couples very well with desalination
for water processes, hydrogen production as
well because of the high temperature nature
of the reactor core.
So hopefully, I've covered a--the brief background.
These are the main things that we try to achieve
with the technology.
Those were the driving goals and then how
you would actually put the reactor together
or so the specific details are driven by what
you're trying to get out of it.
And the primary reason why most people look
at thorium is because of the unique nature
of being able to produce a huge amount of
energy for a very small amount of resources
per mega watt being produced and can readily
be put together fairly quickly.
So this time, I'll take questions.
Yeah?
>> The U233 that's re-injected in the core,
how do you keep the 232 out of it?
I mean, it seems that you introduced 232 and
that it's something you don't want to go anywhere
near it.
>> BONOMETTI: All--the--what happens to the
core when you introduce the 233 and the 232
in the reactor core?
Well, first of all, a reactor--or any reactor
is very, very hot and you can't go near it.
It's going to have a lot of radiation going
on.
So, adding the 232 in there is not making
any significance difference in the overall
radioactivity in the core itself.
Definitely, there is a small poison that sits
in there but it's a very small trace amount.
It's when you take it out that unless you
separate it out, you always have hot uranium
and the difference is the separation is chemical
separation versus the uranium-233 which is
what you want for the weapon and uranium-232
which produces this gamma all the time and
it's the key chain.
It has to be done with separation techniques
that are more common to weapon development.
Did I get the question right in it?
>> I was just wondering if it makes the design
of the reactor [INDISTINCT] because the U233
is actually part of the process?
So, you know, if the materials you use for
example is part of the pumping, you know,
we would run into problems if your plant becomes
contaminated with some 232.
>> BONOMETTI: No because there's--again, the
question, I--it was--is there an issue with
the 233, 232 in the reactor core or as it
comes out through the piping because of this
radioactivity.
The decay products in the reactor overwhelm
that.
There's just one small source.
The reason why it's significant for proliferation
issues is the fact that it's hard to separate
because it's from the stuff you want because
it's still uranium, chemically.
As far as the reactor itself, any of the pumping
of the pipes and everything else is going
to see some level of radioactivity just because
of the decay products.
Those decay products--what's nice about this
reactor are always kept in a minimum because
you can take them out.
The gases, anything like krypton or whatever
comes out in the pumping process.
So, it's actually a cleaner reactor if you
want inside the reactor and it wears and tear
radioactivity-wise less.
Yes?
>> What's your estimated cost for the consumers
say, I don't know, a wholesome price or retail
price if you were handling--what are the barriers
to presume?
>> BONOMETTI: What is the price at the meter
at the end of all this?
We haven't gotten that far in economic development
of what that would be.
The argument here is that the technology and
the research has been done and there is a
systems engineering point of view that you
will say, "It will be less expensive."
Exactly, we're estimating 20 to--or I think
it was at 30%-50% less a more specific design.
Remember, everything is being done on everybody's
own time.
This is a grass root effort that, you know,
we hope that somebody with the government
or somebody else wants to pick this up, it's
all free knowledge but that's--it was a great
question.
Did I answer the other part of the question?
There was cost, electricity and then?
>> What are your barriers?
So basically, [INDISTINCT]
>> BONOMETTI: Well, the barriers--to put this
together?
>> Yes.
>> BONOMETTI: Couple of them.
One of them would be that, you know, the nuclear
industry is run by the--by the government.
You're going to have the government blessing
on something unless you leave the United States
or whatever.
There are other countries that are looking
into thorium but again, not significantly.
And so, I think the barrier is, you know,
those types of things.
It is a nuclear process and you're going to
have to deal with the proper regulations to
make--meet that.
Yeah, you go.
>> [INDISTINCT] and can you explain that [INDISTINCT]
>> BONOMETTI: Negative--yeah, let me go back
to the slide.
The--basically, it's the ability of the reactor
to respond in producing less power as the
temperature goes up.
So, as the reactor core--a normal reactor,
when the temperature goes up, okay, there's--usually
the core temperature--what do you call it,
is moderated with the water and you get less
power being produced.
Okay.
Maybe you flow more water through the reactor,
for example.
This expands itself, the core being liquid
squeezes out and the less density you have,
the less fuel you have in the reactor, therefore
the less energy you can produce.
>> [INDISTINCT] it's thermal [INDISTINCT]
>> BONOMETTI: So it's thermal.
It's based on thermal expansion on how much
fuel you're actually having in your reactor.
In the same token, if your generators are
producing more electricity because of the
higher demand, it sends back that fluid colder
which is denser and therefore it will have
more energy and it is a natural process within
the reactor itself.
That's a common nuclear, you know, I guess
determination of how safe a reactor is.
It's how good that coefficient is.
Yes?
>> [INDISTINCT] what are the engineering challenges
involved?
Like, it strikes me that, you know, pumping
extremely hot in both senses of the word salt
through pipes and pumps and such, it might
be a really difficult thing to do.
Could we build one of these [INDISTINCT]
>> BONOMETTI: The Engineering challenge is--I
guess, is the question pumping hot salts to
pipes and those kinds of things.
We do that on a regular basis in the industry.
A lot of processes--a lot of industrial processes
use the same kind of hot salt a chemical industry
uses.
So, there's presidents that would pump manufactures
that do that kind of thing.
The temperatures are hot but not, you know,
something that's not done everyday in commercial
industries.
The--obviously, the safety requirements for
everything--you are talking about a nuclear
reactor, it's going have to be really good
pumps and the paperwork is a mile high to
make sure those pumps are, you know, adequate.
But again, even if the pump failed, it doesn't--you
can drain the tank and it will naturally get
hot if the pump stops pumping.
The core will get hot over heat, pour out
into your tray and stop it for you.
So, if the--there's nothing inherently that
the industry can't do.
It is a big systems engineering problem to
make one that's cost effective, that's safe
and meets all requirements and that all the
little details were taking care of but nothing
that we've seen.
Yes?
>> Yeah.
So, I'm guessing there's some kind of GEN-4
reactor development thing happening, you know,
a little brighter or something like this.
It looks like six different designs that they're
pursuing and this is one of them but can tell
us a little bit about what that is, like what
expenses get funded, how do [INDISTINCT] bigger,
you know?
>> BONOMETTI: Okay.
The question being, what is the GEN-4 or how
does that play in with this.
GEN-4 is a department of energy initiative.
It's probably a good one in some ways.
They're looking for what's the next generation
reactor.
Technically, malt and salt not LFTR which
is slightly different is under their category
of GEN-4.
My personal take on it when I look at the
amount of money they're putting in, I'm not--I'm
not sure they're very serious.
I think it's--and a round of--and don't quote
me, but $40,000 which is enough for one person
to go out and write a paper and go to a conference,
whereas the other projects are getting much
more serious money.
You know, I'll let other people decide what
the track record of the Department of Energy
is in, you know, solving energy problems at
this point.
>> [INDISTINCT] which is--so Kirk Sorensen
had got his blog on the [INDISTINCT] so that's
one sort of [INDISTINCT] of work on this kind
of thing [INDISTINCT]
>> BONOMETTI: Yes.
Kirk Sorensen and I are, you know, this is
our--LFTR is that.
And that thorium forum is probably the key
repository in which people all get together
and work on.
>> So, there was another thing in France and
then there was Per Peterson up in Berkeley
working on this stuff...
>> BONOMETTI: There are several people that--you
are asking who else is working thorium?
>> [INDISTINCT] still working on this stuff
or he--like, results finding and then goes
to something else?
>> BONOMETTI: I think he's kind of moved on
to other things.
He was at the Department of the Energy, I
believe and so I don't--I don't really know
the total status.
Everybody's got their little ideas of how
to use thorium and some of them are just to
add thorium to a reactor--the existing reactor
and qualify that fuel.
Now qualification of a fuel for any reactor
is a long, expensive process and the question
is if you're going to spend a lot time and
money and put it into the commercial reactors
that are running fine or are safe.
I would say maybe that's a little too much
money, a little risk you're doing trying to
add it but that's--that is a solution for
thorium.
Thorium in a pebble bed is another one that
people have talked about.
It's a little bit better than maybe the conventional
reactor.
It's looking more and more like a liquid system.
My point is I think you should go to liquid
system and burn all the fuel because in a
pebble bed or these other concepts, you don't
burn all the thorium and you still have a
lot of waste that you get rid off.
Yes?
>> Is this something that you [INDISTINCT]
design to build through private funds or is
it something that you have to have government
funding involved in them?
>> BONOMETTI: Private or government funding.
Well, that's up to individuals.
Again, the organization--the [INDISTINCT]
organization that I'm really representing
or working with doesn't have any answer to
that.
It is--it would be daunting for private funding,
it could be done for private funding.
Certainly, the navy would be a prime example
of wanting something like this yet the navy
has the same problem that the Department of
Energy does.
They're kind of fixed in a certain pattern.
It's very hard to break that.
So, if somebody wants to take it to the next
step which is maybe demonstrating the chemistry
without the nuclear material, a private company
would have to have some backing from the government
to say, "Yes.
You can use uranium-233."
Which there is actually a lot of stored and
they want to blend it down and throw it away.
That's a said way the government is looking
at this.
They haven't done it yet but there are plans
for it.
So, if I was a private company or private
funds, the first thing I'd make sure is I
had somebody in the government side saying,
"Yes.
We will hold that fuel.
And yes, we will let you utilize that," because
you need some kind of seed--fission material
in order to start the process.
Okay, any other questions?
All right, one more.
>> So you're not [INDISTINCT] pursuing a path
making--I mean, you're obviously making it
invisible but is there a free path of, you
know, getting the government to go in on this
to get research?
>> BONOMETTI: I think there are efforts that--I
guess, you're question is, you know, what
are the paths that we're pursuing or the path
that could be pursued to get this going other
than the education process that we're attempting
to do right now?
Yes, there is.
There's attempt to talk to people both in
the government.
When I was Naval Post graduate School, the
students that had designed projects found
that it was very interesting what it could
for the navy as far as capability and ships.
We need to do some more studies like that.
I suspect that is going to come out, I think
in the next six months because of all the
energy research that's going to be done or
analysis is going to be done just to find
out which way we want to go.
The thorium will be--and LFTR specifically
will be thrown in that mix.
What comes out or who stands up and says,
"Yes.
Let's do this," or provide funds to do this,
that remains to be seen.
And I have talked to other people, you know,
privately about, you know, what specific paths
we've done, you know, and share that information.
Okay.
No--last minute question.
One more, okay.
>> Okay.
So, in considering--yes, it seems like if
the problem is kind of just bureaucratic like,
you know, mindset, roadblock kind of going
to the to but, you know, Obama had said that
you [INDISTINCT] anti-nuclear, go to the administration
and say, "You know, what can you do to consider
this and make it, you know, maybe--you can
actually take it seriously?"
>> BONOMETTI: Yes, going to the top.
Again, not really a question but a statement
of going to the top all way, the administration
and getting him to look at this and, you know,
point the agencies or money in that direction
certainly would help.
I mean, that's the easy path if we can do
that.
People are working on those kinds of things.
Like I said, I think it's a credible story,
enough to keep it in the mix, enough to look
at it seriously and enough to seriously look
at why has it not been promulgated to this
point?
What are those roadblocks and is it just,
you know, the bureaucratic--bureaucracy that
we have?
That's a good question.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
