Day 163 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 8:26-40. Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch. Thanks to God’s word in the scroll of Isaiah, he too came to believe and was baptized.

1 Chronicles 8 lists the genealogy of king Saul.

1 Chronicles 9 lists the people, the priests, the Levites and the Levite gatekeepers in Jerusalem that had returned after the captivity in Babylon. It continues with other Levite responsibilities and finally gives another part of the genealogy of king Saul.

1 Chronicles 10 tells the inglorious death of king Saul. He fell on his own sword and his sons were killed.

Day 162 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 8:1-25. Saul persecuted the Church, it was so severe that the believers scattered all over the nations. Thanks to the persecution the Gospel reached Samaria where Philip met Simon the Sorcerer who came to believe, but he still thought the Holy Spirit could be purchased with money!

1 Chronicles 6 lists the family tree of Levi, musicians in the house of the Lord, the family tree of Aaron and, since the Levites had no land allocation, it lists their dwelling places.

1 Chronicles 7 lists the family tree of Issachar, the family tree of Benjamin, the family tree of Naphtali, the family tree of Manasseh West of Jordan, the family tree of Ephraim and the family tree of Asher.

Why Thorium? 15. Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport. U-232 is the preferred radioactive tracer.

Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport. I have been following the events at Fukushima Nuclear Power plants disaster with great interest. How ironic that one of the greatest problems was with the spent fuel, not with the inability to shut down the working units. The spent fuel issue is the real Achilles’ heel of the Nuclear Power Industry. The cost of reprocessing and storing spent reactor fuel will burden us for centuries after the reactors themselves have been decommissioned when their useful life is ended. Molten Salt Thorium nuclear power works differently from conventional Uranium fueled Reactors as the fissile fuel gets generated in the breeding process itself and nearly all fuel gets consumed as it is generated. When the process shuts down, that is it. Only the radioactivity that is en route so to say will have to be accounted for, not everything generated thus far in the process. The difference is about ten thousand to one in the size of the problem. It is high time to rebuild and expand our Nuclear power generation by switching to Thorium..

The detractors of Thorium like to point out that the Thorium-U233 process generates some U 232 in the presence of free neutrons. U-232 decays with a 69-year half-life through 1.9-year half-life Th-228 to Tl-208, which emits a 2.6 MeV gamma ray upon decay. Gamma rays are easily shielded by clean water, so transportation and storage is not a problem. Rather than being a problem, this is a great asset. The ²³²U decay chain is the source of the high energy gamma rays that make ²³²U the preferred tracer isotope. Uranium-232 has a half-life of 69.8 years, and the decay chain terminates at ²⁰⁸Pb (National Nuclear Data Center).

Why Thorium? 14. Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control.

Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control. This is another beauty of the molten salt design. The temperature coefficient is highly negative, making possible a simple and safe design enabling simple and consistent feedback. What does that mean? It means that when the temperature of the fissile core rises, the efficiency of the reaction goes down, leading to less heat generated. There is no risk for a thermal runaway. This advantage is also true for Molten Salt Enriched Uranium Reactors. In contrast, graphite moderated generators can have a positive temperature coefficient which leads to complicated control, necessitating many safety circuits to ensure controlled startup, operation and shutdown. Their worst failure mode is they can go prompt critical, and no containment vessel can contain the explosion that would occur, so they were built without one. There have been several major accidents in graphite moderated reactors, with the Windscale fire and the Chernobyl disaster being the largest and best known..

Day 161 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 7 begins with Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin and ends with the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr killed for his Christian faith.

1 Chronicles 5 contains the family tree of Reuben, the family tree of Gad and the family tree of Manasseh East of Jordan. These three tribes were unfaithful to God and the king of Assyria defeated them and took them into exile.

Day 160 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 6. To better serve the needs of widows seven people were chosen, among them Stephen. They would later be called deacons. Stephen spoke boldly about Jesus, he was in the Spirit, was seized, and so a trial began.

1 Chronicles 2 lists the family tree of Israel, then concentrates on the family tree from Judah to David, continuing with the family tree of Hezron, the family tree of Jerahmeel and finally the family tree of Caleb.

1 Chronicles 3 contains the family tee of David, the royal line of Solomon and the royal line of Jeconiah after the exile.

1 Chronicles 4 contains the rest of the family tree of Judah and the family tree of Simeon.

Why Thorium? 13. Molten Salt Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors cannot have a meltdown, the fuel is already molten, and it is a continuous process. No need for refueling shutdowns.

refueling shutdowns.

With Molten Salt nuclear Reactors there is no risk for a meltdown, the fuel is already molten, and that is a safe design. The fissile fuel in a Thorium reactor is U-233 in the form of UraniumFluoride (UF4) salt which also contains Lithium and Beryllium to lower the melting point, the operating temperature is held below 650C to allow reasonably priced and available alloys that also withstand high radiation. In its molten form the salt has a very low vapor pressure. The salt flows easily through the heat exchangers and the separators. The salt is very toxic, but since it is completely sealed it is not corrosive. Being a fluid, it is constantly mixed for optimum efficiency. The reactor will never have to be shut down for refueling, it is a continuous flow process. Uranium-235 Nuclear reactors on the other hand have to be shut down for refueling and rebalancing of the fuel rods a little more often than once every two years. The average shutdown is 35 days, or about 5% of the time. Then comes the major problem of safely and securely transporting and reprocessing the spent fuel. This problem is not yet solved for conventional Nuclear power plants, so spent fuel is stored on site, sometimes for years. In a LFTR the fuel is spent as it is produced, so the fissile inventory is constantly kept at a minimum, and fission products and extra generated U-233 is separated out. this is a much cleaner process than reprocessing spent fuel. The high operating temperature gives the LFTR a much more efficient carnot cycle conversion factor of more than 40%, whereas conventional nuclear plants with water as a coolant medium cannot exceed 38% efficiency.

Why Thorium? 12. Atmospheric pressure operating conditions, no risk for explosions. Much safer and simpler design.

Molten Salt nuclear Reactors operate under Atmospheric pressure conditions, no risk for explosions. Materials subjected to high radiation tend to get brittle or soften up. Molten Salt Thorium nuclear reactors operate under atmospheric conditions so the choice of materials that can withstand both high temperatures and high radiation is much greater, leading to a superior and less expensive design. There is no high pressure gas buildup and the separation stage can be greatly simplified, leading to a much safer design. (From Wikipedia:)

The LFTR needs a mechanism to remove the fission products from the fuel. Fission products left in the reactor absorb neutrons and thus reduce neutron economy. This is especially important in the thorium fuel cycle with few spare neutrons and a thermal neutron spectrum, where absorption is strong. The minimum requirement is to recover the valuable fissile material from used fuel.

Removal of fission products is similar to reprocessing of solid fuel elements; by chemical or physical means, the valuable fissile fuel is separated from the waste fission products. Ideally the fertile fuel (thorium or U-238) and other fuel components (e.g. carrier salt or fuel cladding in solid fuels) can also be reused for new fuel. However, for economic reasons they may also end up in the waste.

On site processing is planned to work continuously, cleaning a small fraction of the salt as often as practical and sending it back to the reactor. There is no need to make the fuel salt very clean; the purpose is to keep the concentration of fission products and other impurities (e.g. oxygen) low enough. The concentrations of some of the rare earth elements must be especially kept low, as they have a large absorption cross section. Some other elements with a small cross section like Cs or Zr may accumulate over years of operation before they are removed.

As the fuel of a LFTR is a molten salt mixture, it is attractive to use pyroprocessing, high temperature methods working directly with the hot molten salt. Pyroprocessing does not use radiation sensitive solvents and is not easily disturbed by decay heat. It can be used on highly radioactive fuel directly from the reactor. Having the chemical separation on site, close to the reactor avoids transport delays and risks and keeps the total inventory of the fuel cycle low. Ideally everything except new fuel (thorium) and waste (fission products) stays inside the plant.

One potential advantage of a liquid fuel is that it not only facilitates separating fission-products from the fuel, but also isolating individual fission products from one another, which is lucrative for isotopes that are scarce and in high-demand for various industrial (radiation sources for testing welds via radiography), agricultural (sterilizing produce via irradiation), and medical uses (Molybdenum-99 which decays into Technetium-99m, a valuable radiolabel dye for marking cancerous cells in medical scans).

Mo-99 is used in hospitals to produce the technetium-99m employed in around 80% of nuclear imaging procedures. Produced in research reactors, Mo-99 has a half-life of only 66 hours and cannot be stockpiled, and security of supply is a key concern. Most of the world’s supply currently comes from just four reactors in Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia and South Africa, and recent years have illustrated how unexpected shutdowns at any of those reactors can quickly lead to shortages. Furthermore, most Mo-99 is currently produced from HEU targets, which are seen as a potential nuclear proliferation risk.

With the Mo-99 having a half-life of 66 hours and being continuously separated out from the fertile core in a LFTR, this seems to be the ideal vehicle to cheaply produce ample supplies of this valuable medical resource.

While LFTR reactors can be built today safely and profitably, much work remains to be done to achieve the full eight to ten thousand times reduction in TRU waste and maximize the breeding rate of U-233 for optimal speed of expanding the Thorium program.

Day 159 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 5:12-42. When Ananias and Sapphira had lied to the Holy Spirit and died on the spot, great fear and great power came over the Church. An Angel of the LORD came during the night and freed the Apostles that had been jailed the previous day. They went back to the Temple courts and got called in to the Sanhedrin again for the crime of preaching about Jesus, but Gamaliel gave them good advice, they listened, and after flogging the Apostles were let go.

1 Chronicles 1 lists the partial family tree of Adam to Noah’s sons, the family tree of Abraham, beginning with the family tree of Keturah, Abraham’s concubine whom he married after the death of Sarah, the family tree of Isaac, the family tree of the people of Seir in Edom and finally a list of the kings of Edom.

Psalm 42, a Maskil. Of the sons of Korah. A very old Psalm, it mentions Elohim many times, but Jehovah only once. It begins “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.” Enjoy! (I love the song)

Day 158 of reading the Holy Bible in 365 days.

Acts 5:1-11. Ananias and Sapphira were lying to the Holy Spirit and fell down dead. This lead to great fear and great power in the Church.

Proverbs 6 warns against cosigning documents with neighbors, condemns sluggards of their sleepy and lazy habits and points to the destruction of wicked men. It tells about seven detestable things to the LORD, and finally it takes a dim view of adultery, a sure way to destroy yourself and others.

Psalm 41, of David. A prayer for help in sickness and protection from traitors and other enemies.