Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport. I am following the events at Fukushima Nuclear Power plants with great interest. How ironic that the greatest risk is 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. Molten Salt Thorium nuclear power works differently from conventional Uranium 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 one to ten thousand in the size of the problem. It is high time to rebuild and expand our Nuclear power generation by switching to Thorium.
Tag: science
The need to develop Thorium based Nuclear Energy as the major electric energy supply. 10. 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, leading to a safe design with simple and consistent feedback. What does that mean? It means that if temperature in the core rises, the efficiency of the reaction goes down, leading to less heat generated. There is no risk for a thermal runaway. In contrast, graphite moderated generator can have a positive temperature coefficient which leads to complicated control, necessitating many safety circuits to ensure proper operation and shutdown. Their failure mode is they go prompt critical, and no containment vessel can contain the explosion that would occur, so they are built without one.
The need to develop Thorium based Nuclear Energy as the major electric energy supply. 9. Molten Salt Thorium Reactors cannot have a meltdown, the fuel is already molten.
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.
China is seriously considering restricting rare earth exports to the US. Why is that important?
One week ago, President Xi and Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top trade negotiator, visited a rare earth metals mine in Jiangxi province. This has led to the rumor that China is seriously considering restricting rare earth exports to the US. China may also take other countermeasures in the future. The trade negotiations between U.S. and China got a lot more serious. It extends far beyond tariffs and intellectual property, it now involves strategic materials.
The first thing we must realize is that rare earth metals are not all that rare. They are a thousand times or more abundant than gold or platinum in the earth crust and easy to mine, but a little more difficult to refine. Thorium and Uranium will also be mined at the same time as the rare earth metals since they appear together in the ore.
U.S. used to be the major supplier of rare earth metals, which was fine up to around 1984. Then the U.S. regulators determined that Uranium and Thorium contained in the ore made the ore radioactive, so they decided to make rare earth metal ore subject to nuclear regulations with all what that meant for record keeping and control. 
This made mining in the U.S. unprofitable so in 2001 the last domestic mine closed down. China had no such scruples, such as human and environmental concerns, so they took over the rare earth metals mining and in 2010 controlled over 95% of the world supply, which was according to their long term plan of controlling the world by 2025.
The U.S. used to have a strategic reserve of rare earth metals, but that was sold off in 1998 as being no longer cost effective or necessary. Two years later the one U.S. rare earth metals mine that used to supply nearly the whole world, the Mountain Pass Mine in California closed down, together with its refining capacity. From that day all rare earth metals were imported. In 2010 it started up again together with the refining capacity but went bankrupt in 2015, closed down the refining but continued selling ore to China. They just announced they will start up refining again late 2020. Meanwhile China is slapping on a 25% import tariff on imported ore starting July 1. Rare earth metals may be in short supply for a while.
So, why is this important? 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.
The Chinese almost got away with it, and that is but one reason the trade negotiations are so complicated and hard fought, but necessary. Donald Trump fights for reciprocity and fair competition.
The need to develop Thorium based Nuclear Energy as the major electric energy supply. 2. Thorium already mined, ready to be extracted.
Thorium is a by-product of mining heavy metals and rare earth metals. The price is the cost of extracting and refining, which can be as low as $40/Kg. No extra mining is required for extracting the Thorium, and we all know that mining is a major source for pollution.
The first thing we must realize is that rare earth metals are not all that rare. They are a thousand times or more abundant than gold or platinum in the earth crust and easy to mine, but a little more difficult to refine. Thorium and Uranium will be mined together with rare earth metals.
U.S. used to be the major supplier for rare earth metals, which was fine up to around 1984. Then the U.S. regulators determined that Uranium and Thorium contained in the ore made the ore radioactive, so they decided to make rare metal ore a “source material” with all what that meant for record keeping and control. This made mining in the U.S. unprofitable so in 2001 the last mine closed down. China had no such scruples, such as human and environmental concerns, so they took over the rare earth metals concession and in 2010 controlled over 95% of the world supply, which was according to their long term plan of controlling the world by 2025. Luckily this has now been rectified with U.S. and Australian mines reopened.
So, why is this important? 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.
The Chinese almost got away with it, and that is but one reason the trade negotiations are so complicated and hard fought, but necessary. Donald Trump fights for reciprocity and fair competition.
The need to develop Thorium based Nuclear Energy as the major electric energy supply. 1. A million years supply at today’s consumption levels.
We live in challenging times with enormous environmental challenges. It takes a lot of energy to clean up the mess we have generated over the ages. It would be a shame to use up our remaining coal, oil and gas to produce the electricity needed to clean up. Oil coal and gas will eventually be depleted and we need to save some for our great grandchildren so they can enjoy flying like we have become accustomed to. Like the famous conservationist Sarah Palin once said: “for when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
The need to develop a Thorium based molten salt fast breeder nuclear reactor to develop our energy needs for the future can not be overstated. Lest anyone should be threatened by the words fast breeder, it simply means it uses fast neutrons instead of thermal neutrons, and breeder means it produces more fissible material than it consumes, in the case of Thorium the ratio is about 1.05.
There is enough Thorium around to last for a million years at today’s worldwide electricity generation levels. Uranium is in short supply. The consumption exceeds production, and the worldwide major importer of Uranium is the U.S. (The fact that we sold 20% of our uranium ore to the Russians did not help)
There are of course the sustainable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal, tidal and wave energy, and they should be pursued where economically and environmentally appropriate. These are a separate but important subjects.
Climate panic. New terms to use for climate change according to the Guardian (U.K.)
“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief of the British newspaper the Guardian, Katharine Viner.
To accomplish this the Guardian suggested these new terms to replace the old ones.
Old term : “climate change” New terms: “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” “climate breakdown”.
Old term: “global warming”. New term: “global heating“.
Old term: “climate skeptic” New term: “climate science denier”
In October, the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) said carbon emissions must halve by 2030 to avoid even greater risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
Lucky for us, we still have a beautiful world around us and it has not suffered a thermal runaway yet, even though the yearly CO2 emissions have doubled since 1982. But, for most of this time we have worldwide satellite and other data to see and verify how the global ecosystem has responded to this unprecedented CO2 increase. As every true scientist knows, validation by observation beats theoretical models every time.
Let us concentrate on just one aspect of weather: Tornadoes. They occur when there is cold, dry atmosphere next to warm, wet air, usually on each side of the jet stream. We are having a tornado outbreak right now
This is the second longest-streak without an EF5/F5 tornado since records began in 1950 and it is just the second time dating to 1950 the U.S. has gone five years or longer with no twisters rated EF5/F5.
The number of F/EF5 tornadoes in the U.S. by year from 1950-2018.
(Data: NOAA/SPC; Graph: Infogram) As we can see from the chart, catastrophic tornadoes are in a slight downward trend.
The number of tornadoes are well within the normal range, and no supertornadoes yet.
The amount of hail is running below normal, which is good.
What we have is a much better reporting of tornadoes and hail and the damage it causes, accompanied with the explanation “climate change” or climate emergency or words to that effect. Meanwhile, this climate observer dubbed climate science denier still goes by observations.
Water vapor and CO2 – why nearly all climate models fail.
The candidate Beto O’Rourke
on Climate change is but a dork.
He does not understand
that the world will not end.
Fake News! – Only New Green Deal pork!
Quote from Beto O’Rourke:
“The scientists are unanimous on this. We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis, can we make it? I don’t know. It’s up to every one of us. Do you want to make it?”
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 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 reaching the ocean. All water is already spoken for, especially in the 10 to 40 degrees latitude, where most people live.
Allow me to be somewhat technical and give the background to why I know we will never experience the thermal runaway they are so afraid of.
Many years ago I worked at Hewlett Packard on an Atomic Absorption Detector. It was a huge technical success but a commercial failure, as it was too expensive to use for routine applications. However it found a niche and became the detector of choice when dismantling the huge nerve gas stockpiles remaining from the cold war. I was charged with doing the spectrum analysis and produce the final data from the elements. One day two salesmen came and tried to sell us a patented device that could identify up to 21 different elements with one analysis. They had a detector that divided the visual band into 21 parts, and bingo, with proper, not yet “fully developed” software you could now analyze up to 21 elements with one gas chromatic analysis. What could be better? We could only analyze correctly four or five elements simultaneously. It turns out the elements are absorbing in the same wavelength bands, scientifically speaking they are not orthogonal, so software massaging can only go so far. It turned out that the promised new detector was inferior to what we already had and could only quantify three or 4 elements at the most.
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 near the poles when the temperature is below 0 F, way below freezing. A chart shows the relationship between CO2 and water vapor:
Source: http://notrickszone.com/2017/07/31/new-paper-co2-has-negligible-influence-on-earths-temperature/
Even in Barrow, Alaska water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. Only at the South Pole (And North Pole) does CO2 dominate (in the long 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 is three bands where CO2 absorb much 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.
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 added one quarter of what the models predicted.
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 May through August temperatures were lower. It takes time to melt all the extra snow.
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 10000 years from now.
- 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 Eagles that likes to build their aeries on top of 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.
- Explore geothermal energy in geologically stable areas.
- Where ever possible add peak power generation and storage capacity to existing hydroelectric power plants
- 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.
- Put fusion power as important for the future but do not rush it, let the research and development be scientifically determined.
- When Thorium power is built up and do replace coal and gas fired 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.
The eagle has landed. Dead. Will the Green New Deal kill them all?
The Eagle has landed in aerie
on top of a windmill – that’s scary.
Doesn’t know she will die,
whacked right out of the sky
from rotating blades unawary.
The idea of wind farming is to create sustainable energy.
Will the population of eagles and other large birds be sustainable?
They like to build their aeries on top of wind turbines, the highest structure in their territory.
It is estimated that the total bird kill by the year 2030 is going to be 1 million three hundred thousand birds. And that is if the Green New Deal is not implemented.
Is the large bird population sustainable even now?
In parts of Ohio they have forbidden the turbines to run at night to protect a rare bat.
And it takes energy to produce energy. The cost of de-icing the average airplane is $1500. And that is without the helicopter.
And I am not sure about the former.
I end with Isaiah 40:31
“…but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”
Bill Nye once on gender probability, A Limerick
What makes you a girl or a boy?
As Chromosomes unfurl with joy
its XX or XY
only 2, and that’s why
it’s woman or man, let’s enjoy.
Or, as the French say: Vive la différence! But then again, the French have a fully gendered language. Everything has a gender, male or female, nothing transgender.
We have come a long way. Bill Nye, the “Science Guy” showed a skit on Netflix that I cannot repost here, it is so gross, essentially claiming that anything goes sexually, and anything is “morally” equivalent. (By objecting to it, I guess it makes me a homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, omniphobic hater.) Or, maybe I am like the Bill Nye of the 1990’s, here using a girl to explain probability.
From this we learn that the Bible is right:
Genesis 1:27, KJV So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This is not hate, it is God-given biological truth.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 