In addition he signed one Executive Order restoring Science to the Golden Standard: Free from politics!
In the presentation of the Executive Orders the CEO of Oklo, James DeWitte mentioned that we are restarting a technology that has been inactive for over 40 years. This can only mean he meant without saying so the Oak ridge Molten Salt Thorium reactor. It was going great, but President Nixon wanted to go with the fast breeder reactor and move nuclear development to California, so they started to badmouth the MSR. One false accusation was that it was unreliable and needed to be shutdown frequently. The real reason was it was routinely shut down on weekends to save money and personnel. The Molten Salt Reactor does not have a poison time after shutdown as does conventional power station but can be scaled up and down including small power stoppages. I see this as an advantage. Anyhow, this is what Mr. DeWitte said:
One of many new options
There are only a few fissionable options, Uranium 233, Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239. Uranium 233 is produced by bombarding Thorium 232 with neutrons. Plutonium 239 is produced by bombarding Uranium 238 with neutrons.
Right now only 0.5% of the mined uranium is used. The rest goes to nuclear waste. Molten Salt reactors can use the nuclear waste as raw material and use the other 99.5% of the available energy. Another exciting use of Plutonium is when we finally dismantle the nuclear arsenal and burn it for peaceful use. And there is four times as much Thorium as there is mine-able Uranium, enough for thousands of years!
This is the beginning!
Here are 30 reasons why Thorium is a superior source for nuclear power:
Sweden is perhaps the “greenest” country on earth. Their electric supply is a healthy mix of hydropower, wind, solar and biomass to make things go when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Many cities are well planned where nearly all residential heat comes from spillheat from power plants. In Linköping the year 1967 the whole town was heated with surplus electricity during the spring flood. No house was allowed to have a fireplace in the regulated zone (except the city Architect’s and 3 other townhouses that somehow escaped the ordinance.) The energy use looks like this for Sweden:
Sweden once supplied nearly 40% of its energy needs via nuclear (electricity and heat) About half of the nuclear installations are retired and the last 6 are to be decommissioned before the end of the decade. To end nuclear energy was decided by a previous government in 1980 and the phase-out was to be completed in the mid 2020s. The goal was to generate 100% electric energy from renewable sources by 2040. (later changed to 2045).
Then Sweden had an election in 2022 and the Social Democrat, Green and Socialist coalition got replaced with a moderate, Christian Democrat and Liberal coalition with support of the nationalistic Sweden Democrat party. On June 20 they changed the slogan to 100% fossil-free electric energy by 2045.
This goal is impossible to meet without expanding nuclear power, especially since Sweden has specified that all new cars must be electric by 2035.
Then in January 2023 Sweden announced the largest Rare earth metals find in Europe. Europe is right now importing 98% of its rare earth metals from China. The find is called the Per Geijer deposit right next to the World’s largest underground Iron ore mine, the LKAB Kiruna mine located 120 miles north of the polar circle.
The new find is still basically a magnetite and hematite ore of excellent quality that also contains a significant amount of P2O5, which is premium fertilizer feed-stock. In addition It contains the largest find of rare earth metals in Europe. So far it is proven to contain the following Rare earth Metals:
HREO constitutes 17% within the tested apatite concentrate samples and 19% in the overall exploration samples.
LREO constitutes 83% within the tested apatite concentrate samples and 81% in the overall exploration samples.
Just take a look at all the uses for rare earth metals. The most sought after pays all the cost of mining and refining, and the rest are readily available at nominal cost.
What is not mentioned is the content of Thorium and Uranium, but Thorium is always found in small amounts where ever Rare earths are found and very often some Uranium is also found in the ore.
In order to meet the need for both extraction of raw materials and at the same time increase Europe’s processing capacity LKAB has recently become the main owner of and entered into a cooperation with Norwegian REEtec. They have developed an innovative and sustainable technology for the separation of rare earth elements that can compete with the dominant Chinese production. The planned extraction site is proposed to be in the Luleå area.
Rare earth ore nearly always contains measurable amounts of Thorium and/or Uranium.The Thorium is nearly always returned to the slag heap, and sometimes the Uranium too if the concentration is low. No information has been given yet how much of anything the ore contains, but it is safe to assume that it is the largest ore find in Europe.
Sweden has a long history of mining. Before 1288 A.D. the local farmers of Falun found copper in what was called Kopparberget and the first documentary evidence of the mine appears in a letter from 1288 giving the Bishop of Västerås a one-eighth share in the mine in exchange for landholdings. The document shows that a cooperative organization by this time was managing the mine, with shares being bought and sold. The mine grew, and was once the largest copper mine in the world. This is also the reason the traditional color of Swedish farms is red, thanks to subsidies from the government if they painted their gray wooden farms and barns with Falu red paint.
Later Sweden became the producer of the best ball bearings in the world, and produced specialty steel for a variety of uses, such as the Sandviken Stradivarius musical saw.
For a while the mines in Sweden were many, but through environmental regulation and cost consideration Sweden now has only 12 mines left in operation. Many of the discontinued mines were started before there was any real environmental regulations, so the cleanup of abandoned mines is still ongoing. Sweden has no coal mines and no natural gas fields.
Sweden is the world leader in recycling everything that is economically defensible to recycle, and the rest of the waste products are, if possible incinerated, producing heat and some electricity. Very little, about one percent is returned to landfills. However, incineration is not recycling, Sweden is burning their only source of coal.
What I am proposing is somewhat akin to the old charcoal kiln; but instead of using wood, the source is trash sonverting trash to coal and gasses.
This is an opportunity for Sweden to be the world leader in recycling nearly everything, including CO2. It just takes energy.
This is my proposal:
Build small modular molten salt thorium reactors, U233 or U 233 and and Plutonium two fuel reactors, an inner shell of U233 or Plutonium as fissile source, and an outer blanket of Thorium, which is the fertile source to generate more U 233 than is consumed. It can be gas cooled, using Helium or molten lead, both work well. Power output will be 100 to 200 MW, and the output temperature will be around 600C.
Municipal, industrial and construction waste will in the first stage be dried, removing nearly all water from the trash. The trash will then be fed into an outgasser, which is fed by 600 C Nitrogen generated from the nuclear heat source, preventing combustion. This will act as a charcoal kiln leaving high quality charcoal to be separately treated and refined, separating out metals and other contaminants. The gasses will run through a turbine generating electricity and scrubbed, separating the hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, chlorine and whatever was in the gasses.
By reducing waste to coal, graphite, graphene and separate hydrogen, oxygen, other gasses and metals it will be true recycling rather than a common waste to power and heat incinerator that produces CO2 and water from H2 and O2, truly wasting energy.
What will Sweden do instead?
SMRs. In Sweden, Kärnfull Next, a subsidiary of Kärnfull Future AB, became the first company in Scandinavia in March 2022 to develop SMR (Small Modular Reactors) projects. Kärnfull Next will work together with GE Hitachi (GEH) towards the deployment of the GEH’s BWRX-300 SMR. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the two companies for this purpose. A letter of intent was also signed with the Finnish utility Fortum at the end of 2022 to explore opportunities for SMR development in Sweden.
In February 2021, the Swedish subsidiary of the energy company Uniper signed an agreement with the developer of the LeadCold SMR and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) with the aim of building a demonstration plant at the Oskarshamn site by 2030. It is envisaged that the LeadCold SEALER SMR will generate between 3 to 10 MW over a period of 10 to 30 years without the need for refueling.
In June 2020, Vattenfall announced that it was conducting a pilot study to examine the construction of at least two SMRs adjacent to the Ringhals nuclear power plant. If the outcome is positive, the first SMR in Sweden could be commissioned in the early 2030s to replace the Ringhals 1 and 2 units, which have been shut down. In December 2022, the French utility EdF and the Finnish company Fortum signed a framework cooperation agreement to jointly explore opportunities for collaboration on the use of SMRs and large nuclear reactors.
The theme for this earth day is still, sustainability, we must reduce the world population to about 700 million from present 7,6 billion, or the planet will be uninhabitable in 9 years.
Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts”. From: “Scandal in Bohemia” A. Conan Doyle.
The first Earth Day in Philadelphia 1970, April 22 (the 100 year anniversary of Lenin’s Birth) featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies. The big environmental scare of the day was the threat of a new Ice Age. The clarion call was: “In the year 2000 temperatures will have fallen 10 degrees”, the culprit was air pollution, especially acid rain. The acid rain was so bad in the Adirondacks, Canada, Norway and Sweden that the Rainbow Trout died in droves, and even the oceans were in danger of getting too acid. The stench from dead fish washing up the shores of lake Ontario was overwhelming. Regulations were enacted to add scrubbers to power stations, waste water was purified, and – wouldn’t you know it, the cooling trend reversed itself and was followed by warming. Since the cooling trend was “obviously man-made” they had to find a reason for the sudden warming. Never mind that around the year 1200 there was at least one farm on South West Greenland that exported, among other things, cheese. How do we know that? They have excavated the ruins of a farm, “Gården under Sanden”, buried under permafrost for six centuries. During these six centuries the Northern Hemisphere experienced what is called “the little ice age” a time when the winters could be so cold that in 1658 the Swedish army, cavalry and artillery crossed the Great Belts in the southern Baltic over ice and sacked Copenhagen.
Picture left: Gården under sanden excavation.
Picture belowt: The crossing of the Great Belt 1658.
To predict future climate changes many computer models have been developed dealing with how the earth responds to changes in atmospheric conditions, especially how it responds to changes in CO2 levels. Most were developed in the 1970 to 2000 time frame, a time of rapid temperature rise and as such they were all given a large factor for the influence of rising CO2. Since 2005 we have had a cooling trend, so the models cooperate less and less and are given more and more unreliable predictions. It is no wonder then that they all have failed to model the past. None of them have reproduced the medieval warm period or the little ice age. If they cannot agree with the past there is no reason to believe they have any ability to predict the future. The models are particularly bad when it comes to predict cloud cover and what time of day clouds appear and disappear. Below is a chart of a number of climate models and their prediction of cloud cover versus observed data. Note especially to the right where most models completely fail to notice the clear skies over Antarctica.
Is there a better way to predict future temperature trends? When you go to the doctor for a physical, at some point and without warning he hits you under the knee with a hammer and watches your reaction. He is observing your impulse response. Can we observe impulse responses for the earth? We can do even better. In the 51 years since the first Earth Day we have collected satellite data, not only temperature, but also cloud data, and the result differs quite a lot from the predicted model results.
Old Lenin stands tall in Seattle. It was the only statue safe in Seattle during the riots of 2020.
Quote from Alexandria Occasio-Cortez in January 2019: “Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we’re like, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’ ” she said.
I beg to differ.
We live in only one world. As a concerned citizen I realize we have immense environmental challenges before us, with water pollution; from plastics in the ocean, excess fertilizer in the rivers, poison from all kinds of chemicals, including antibiotics, birth control and other medicines flushed down the toilet after going through our bodies, animals that are fed antibiotics, pest control, weed control and so on. Increasing CO2 is not one of the problems, it will in fact help with erosion control, and allow us to feed more people on less agricultural land with proper management, and require less fertilizer and water to do so. In fact, proper water management is a larger problem, with some rivers no longer even reaching the ocean. All water is already spoken for, especially in much of the 10 to 40 degrees latitude, where most people live.
In the atmosphere the two most important greenhouse gases are water vapor and CO2 with methane a distant third. Water vapor is much more of a greenhouse gas everywhere except near the tropopause, high above the high clouds and over the polar regions, when the temperature is below 0 F, way below freezing. If the temperature is above freezing, CO2 is of almost no importance. A chart shows the relationship between CO2 and water vapor:
Even in Barrow, Alaska water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. Only at the South Pole (And North Pole) does CO2 dominate (but only in the winter).
All Climate models take this into account, and that is why they all predict that the major temperature increase will occur in the polar regions with melting icecaps and other dire consequences. But they also predict a uniform temperature rise from the increased forcing from CO2 and the additional water vapor resulting from the increased temperature.
This is wrong on two accounts. First, CO2 and H2O gas are nor orthogonal, that means they both absorb in the same frequency bands. There are three bands where CO2 absorbs more than H2O in the far infrared band, but other than that H2O is the main absorber. If H2O is 80 times as common as CO2 as it is around the equator, water vapor is still the dominant absorber, and the amount of CO2 is irrelevant.
Secondly gases cannot absorb more than 100% of the energy available in any given energy wavelength! So if H2O did absorb 80% of the energy and CO2 absorbed 50%, the sum is not 130%, only 90%. (0.8 + 0.5×0,2 or 0.5 + 0.8×0.5). In this example CO2 only adds one quarter of what the models predict.
How do I know this is true? Lucky for us we can measure what increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has already accomplished. For a model to have credibility it must be tested with measurements, and pass the test. There is important evidence suggesting the basic story is wrong. All greenhouse gases work by affecting the lapse rate in the tropics. They thus create a “hot spot” in the tropical troposphere. The theorized “hot spot” is shown in the early IPCC publications. (Fig A)
Fig. B shows observations. The hotspot is not there. If the hotspot is not there, the models must be wrong. So what is wrong with the models? This was reported in 2008 and the models still assume the additive nature of greenhouse gases, even to the point when more than 100% of the energy in a given band is absorbed.
How about Methane? Do not worry, it absorbs nearly exclusively in the same bands as water vapor and has no measurable influence on the climate.
But it will get warmer at the poles. That will cause melting of the ice-caps? Not so fast. When temperature rises the atmosphere can hold more water vapor, so it will snow more at higher latitudes. While winter temperatures will be higher with more snowfall, this will lower the summer temperatures until the extra snow has melted. And that is what is happening in the Arctics
As we can see from this picture, the winters were about 5 degrees warmer, but starting from late May through early August temperatures were lower. It takes time to melt all the extra snow that fell because of the less cold air, able to contain more water vapor.
These are my suggestions
Do not worry about increasing CO2 levels. The major temperature stabilizer is clouds, and they will keep the earth from overheating by reflecting back into space a large amount of incoming solar radiation. Always did, and always will, even when the CO2 concentration was more than 10000 ppm, millions of years ago. Ice ages will still come, and this is the next major climate change, maybe 5000 years from now, probably less.
Clean up rivers, lakes and oceans from pollution. This is a priority.
Limit Wind turbine electric energy to areas not populated by large birds to save the birds. Already over 1.3 million birds a year are killed by wind turbines, including the bald and Golden Eagles that like to build their aeries on top of wind turbines.
Do not build large solar concentration farms. They too kill birds.
Solar panels are o.k. not in large farms, but distributed on roofs to provide backup power.
Exploit geothermal energy in geologically stable areas.
Where ever possible add peak power generation and storage capacity to existing hydroelectric power plants by pumping back water into the dams during excess capacity.
Add peak power storage dams, even in wildlife preserves. The birds and animals don’t mind.
Develop Thorium based Nuclear Power. Russia, China, Australia and India are ahead of us in this. Streamline permit processes. Prioritize research. This should be our priority, for when the next ice age starts we will need all the CO2 possible.
Put fusion power as important for the future but do not rush it, let the research and development be scientifically determined. However, hybrid Fusion -Thorium power generation should be developed.
When Thorium power is built up and has replaced coal and gas fired power plants, then is the time to switch to electric cars, not before.
Standard Nuclear Power plants should be replaced by Thorium powered nuclear plants, since they have only 0,01% of the really bad long term nuclear waste.
Start thinking about recovering CO2 directly from the air and produce aviation fuel. This should be done as Thorium power has replaced coal and gas fired power plants.
This is but a start, but the future is not as bleak as all fearmongers state.
And here are the major advantages of developing Thorium Nuclear Power.
I remember it like yesterday. We sat up late in the evening of July 20 1969 and watched the first landing on the moon, in real-time and transmitted over all 3 networks. Later President Nixon commented: “This is the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation.” Be that as it may, it was watched by about 500 million people world-wide and the future looked bright. Look at us since then:
Fifty years since “a small step for man.”
It seemed we lost sight of the plan.
Now it’s back to the Moon
with the Gateway, and soon
for with Thorium power, we can.
The ambition is to build a space colony on the moon, have a space station, the “Gateway”, and from there launch unmanned and finally manned Mars missions. A very ambitious program. The only way it is possible by utilizing molten salt Thorium nuclear reactors on the moon to cope with the 14 day nights on the moon. This 10 min video tells it well.
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. In its molten form it has a very low vapor pressure. The salt flows easily through the heat exchangers and the separators. The salt is very toxic, but it is completely sealed. 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.
“SarahPalinUSA: House passes energy bill. Will Pres. Obama & Senate Democrat leadership ignore it while Americans face $4 a gallon gas?
The House on Thursday evening passed a bill that seeks to encourage oil shale development, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as force approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
The House approved the bill on a mostly party line vote of 237-187.
On eight occasions, the current occupant of the White House (Obama) has referred to the Spanish model as an example to follow.
After a leaked Spanish government report, a newspaper in Spain (La Gaceta) confirms that the country’s “green economy” policies — the model for the Obama administration’s “green jobs” efforts — have been a disaster: expensive, ineffective, and unworkable
The official jobless rate in Spain went from 7.9% in May 2007 to 19% in Nov 2009. It now stands at 22.8% (Jan 2012)
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español [parˈtiðo soθjaˈlista oˈβrero espaˈɲol], PSOE [peˈsoe]) is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Since the General election on 14 March 2004, the PSOE has been the governing party of Spain. The PSOE is a full member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International.
MADRID — Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Nov 20 2011, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis. The Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
Jan 27 2012 Fitch Ratings has resolved the Negative Rating Watch on six Eurozone sovereigns, downgrading the IDRs for Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain while affirming ratings for Ireland. The Negative Outlook on all six countries indicates a slightly greater than 50% chance of a downgrade over a two-year time horizon.
Oh, and gasoline in Spain is upwards of $5.75 a gallon.
Here is an idea on how to save money that comes from the Thorium community on how to save more than 500 million dollars in the federal budget and energy, scientific and medical benefits as a bonus.(1)
The situation: The Department of Energy has 1400 Kg Uranium-233 stored at Oak Ridge National Lab. They are in process of downgrading it to natural uranium by downblending it with depleted uranium. They need 200 tons of depleted uranium to do the task, rendering it unusable for anything.
The decommissioning was approved in 2003 and to date 130 million has been spent, but the actual downblending hasn’t even started yet.
Proposal 1. Sell it to India which has an active Thorium nuclear reactor program. There it can be used as a fuel producing an estimated 600 million dollars worth of electricity. India is building full scale Thorium reactors. India would be an ideal partner for cooperation in future of nuclear power generation.
Proposal 2. Stop the decommissioning immediately. Build our own Thorium Nuclear Reactor and over time get 600 million dollars worth of electric power and 45g of Plutonium-238. We are out of Pu-238 and can do no more planetary exploration satellites (3).
All deep space satellites all had Pu-238 power sources. Only Russia has Pu-238 left, and the U.S. is banking on getting it for a friendship price. In addition there are significant unique medical applications in treatment of cancer that can be obtained by radiation from byproduct of the Thorium process. Below are pictures of the Thorium process and what a Thorium Power plant might look like. (4)
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 