Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will lessen the need for an expanded national grid. The National Electric grid is at the breaking point. It needs to be expanded, but neighborhood resistance is great in many areas where they need an expanded grid the most. The grid is also sensitive to terrorism activities.
As we can see the national grid is extensive. It is also under severe strain at peak demand. Wind power will only increase the strain since most wind power is generated where few people live and work. A way to lessen the dependency on the national grid is to sprinkle it with many small to medium sized Thorium Nuclear Power generators. They can be placed on barges in rivers and along the coast where the need is greatest, giving the grid maximum flexibility to respond in case of an emergency. LFTR’s do not depend on water for their cooling, so they can be placed anywhere, even in extreme arid areas. Since LFTR can be placed very close to urban centers, transmission losses are kept low. (The Texas grid is separately controlled from the rest of the grid.)
With the present push to convert energy sources to green energy, Thorium Nuclear energy is greener than both solar and wind energy if one includes the necessary mining to extract the materials needed for both solar and wind power. In addition thw wind blows where few people live or want to live, and the electric need is largest in the winter in the north when the sun is largely absent and the snow covers the solar panels, and the need in the south is largest in the summer when the wind blows less except for storms and hurricanes. This requires long transmission lines, and the grid is divided up in sections. The only way to solve this is to expand the grid through a HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current Network. This will be done through 1 MV cables, preferably using existing railroad rightaways when possible. One proposal is shown below. This would connect the Eastern, Western and the Texas network and significantly lessen transmission losses. (Transmission losses in the U.S. electrical grid is more than 50 Billion dollars yearly)
Transmission losses in a HVDC network are far less. Better yet is to place the energy source near the energy consumer. LFTR Thorium power would solve this problem. As we switch from gasoline powered to electric cars, the need to expand the grid will be more and more urgent, and the resistance to build more transmission lines is already great and growing, especially in already overloaded urban areas.
The Democrats greatest concern was Climate Change, followed by Election Laws and Inflation. At the bottom of the list was the Supreme Court.
The Republicans greatest concern was Inflation, followed by Immigration and Crime. At the bottom of the list was Climate Change.
The Independents greatest concern was Inflation, followed by Immigration and COVID-19. At the bottom of the list was Unemployment.
For Blacks there was a tie between COVID-19 and Inflation as their greatest concern, followed by Racial Inequality. At the bottom of the list was the Supreme Court.
And for Hispanics the greatest concern was Inflation, followed by Climate change and COVID-19. At the bottom of the list was Supreme Court.
The biggest concern was Inflation for everybody but Democrats. Their biggest concern was Climate Change, but for Republicans that was the least of their worries.
Why is that?
Some Democrats believe with religious fervor that we have only limited time to solve the climate crisis before we reach the point of no return. Alexandra Occasio Cortez said in January 2019 that if we didn’t abolish fossil fuel asap the world will end in 12 years. There is now less than 9 years left. President Trump ended our part in the Paris accord, and President Biden rejoined it in 2021. If we fulfill all the Paris accord demands, the world temperature, according to the UN agency IPCC will rise 0.05 C cooler by 2030, and a whopping 0.17C less by 2100. See analysis here. Meanwhile, China is in negotiations to buy another 100 million metric tons of Coal from Russia. They consume half the world’s coal mining.
For other Democrats it is another method of gaining control of all production and consumption, the Venezuelan model.
Then there is the sustainability crowd, and they point out the obvious fact, that unless something is done, we will run out of Coal, Oil and Gas sometimes in the not too distant future. Their suggested solution is to build Wind Turbines with generators made in China and western Europe. Solar panels are mostly built in China. But that is not the worst part. To build these generators and solar panels we need rare earth metals, 80% of which come from China. Details here. The problem is what to do when the sun doesn’t shine, which is most of the time, and the wind doesn’t blow. Energy must then be produced by other means. For now it is generated by coal and natural gas plus some diesel generators. Battery technology is not there yet, and hydro-power storage is way inadequate for today’s need.
And then there is John Kerry, who’s greatest fear is that the war in Ukraine will distract us from our greatest threat, Climate Change. His latest concern on Migration: “Wait until you see 100 million people for whom the entire food production capacity has collapsed.”
Some Republicans thank God for the increased CO2 levels because thanks to that the world can now keep an additional 2 billion people from starving. It seems hard to believe, but as food yield increases in greenhouses when additional CO2 is added, so does the greenhouse called earth benefit from more CO2. Don’t believe me? Look at this map:
This means more roots for plants, less erosion, and more food for animals. The exception is desert areas.
Others have noticed that the dire predictions from IPCC, a UN Climate Change Panel, have always been way off base. The temperature increase, while real has always been way below what is predicted. It is predicted that the largest temperature increases occur at the poles, so this summer the South Pole had its coldest winter on record. A weather station at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station registered record cold winter temperatures this season (April – September), averaging at -61.1 °C (-77.9 °F) and breaking the previous record set in 1976 at -60.6 °C (-77 °F). Weather records date back to 1957. The North Pole on the other hand is experiencing a warmer trend, but only in the winter. The summers are marginally cooler, but that is because there is more now to melt. Yes, the Snow over the Arctic is increasing. See the chart from Rutgers Snow Lab:
These are but a few of the differences in opinion concerning Climate change. Let’s see where democrats and republicans live. If we look at the 2020 voting results the map looks nearly all Republican: (84% of the counties voted Republican)
Yet there were more Democrat votes cast than Republican. This is because the largest counties population wise vote Democrat and they experience Climate Change big time thanks to the so called Urban Heat Island effect:
This is late afternoon, somewhere in Urban USA.
People living in the rural America do not experience the Urban Heat Island effect, so they tend to dismiss the constant drumbeat from PBS, everything bad is because of climate change as just idle talk. What do they know; they are stuck in their asphalt jungle complaining about how bad things are. The rural people remember how their grandparents used to say it was much worse in the thirties, heatwave after heatwave and everything dried up. And dust storms and wildfires were much worse. Not to mention the winters, the Mississippi river froze all the way down to New Orleans. We have never has it so good as it is now. Poor Urban Heat Island dwellers.
The Democrats solution to Climate Change is: Eliminate CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and replace with wind and solar but not nuclear power. All cars trucks, trains and busses should be electric. This is impossible.
Republicans want to gradually lessen our dependency of fossil fuel and make electric production come from Nuclear power, preferably small modular Thorium reactors. They have many advantages explained here. There are immense environmental problems, it is not CO2 or even Methane, but water. The American South-west has too little water for its growing population and the east US has sometimes too much. One possible solution is described here.
The United States, the world’s second-leading emitter after China, seeks to reclaim global leadership in the fight against global warming after former President Donald Trump withdrew the country from international efforts to cut emissions. President Joe Biden unveiled the goal to cut emissions by 50%-52% from 2005 levels at the start of a two-day virtual climate summit attended virtually by leaders of 40 countries including China, Russia and India.
How can that be?
China burned 51.2% of the world’s coal in 2012, USA produced 12.5%. China’s production was more than four times larger. This has now stabilized and was in 2018 47%, because India and the real developing world are increasing their dependence on coal for electricity production, and also for cooking meals.
This of course is with the Paris accord in mind. U.S. and the European countries are to limit their emissions and slowly diminish them, down to a per capita emission comparable to the mid 1800’s, while China, being a “developing” country is allowed to increase their emissions until 2030, and then stabilize them, not decrease them.
How can they be burning nearly half the world’s coal mined?
One reason is they are the world’s state controlled manufacturing company. They are also responsible for half the world’s Steel production. China produced 50.3% of the world’s crude Steel in 2015, USA produced 4.9%. China’s production was over 20 times larger than the U.S.Some of this steel was dumped below production cost to crush our domestic low end steel industry. An example: Rolled steel to make steel cans were exported at about $200 a ton, the production cost in the U.S. is more like $400 a ton. They can do this, since their environmental regulations only pay lip service to pollution. Remember how Pittsburgh was 60 years ago? China is much worse.
Cement production. China produced 51.4% of the world’s cement in 2015, USA produced 1.8%. China’s production was almost 30 times larger.
It takes a lot of concrete to build artificial islands so they can take control of the South China Sea. But they are building many other things, Ghost Cities, but also an impressive infrastructure with high speed trains on elevated concrete tracks.
Worrisome as that may be, it is nothing compared to China’s dominance in Rare Earth Metals. Let me explain why rare earth metals are so important to our modern economy.
First, rare earth metals re not rare at all, they exist in small quantities together with Thorium and sometimes Uranium wherever other metals are mined.
The Lanthanides occur in quantity in Monazite, a byproduct of mining Phosphates, but also as a byproduct of mining Titanium, and even from some Iron ores. The rare earth metals are free to begin extraction if it was not for one thing, they also contain Thorium, and Thorium is very weakly radio-active, so in the mid 1980’s the NRC and IAEA reclassified Monazite and anything containing Thorium as a “Source Material” and after that it became too costly to comply with all the regulations for nuclear material, so all production of rare earth minerals ceased in the U.S.
China saw an opportunity to grab the world market for Rare Earth Metals and is now controlling about 85% of the supply of all rare earth metals.
So what are rare earth metals used for?
China now has a de facto monopoly on all usages of rare earth metals, and in the case of war or an embargo, not only are our precious cell phones and computers in jeopardy, so is our defense, night vision goggles, aircraft engines, navigation systems, laser guidance, just to name a few uses.
And not only that, we import the completed parts from China, even for our most sophisticated military equipment, such as the F35 aircraft, after telling the Chinese how to make the components. The very same components are now in China’s version of the F35, still under development, but in a year or so China will have their faithful copies made! A F35 aircraft contains about 935 pounds of rare earth metals.
This is clearly unsustainable, so in 2014 Congress tried to pass HR 4883 and S 2006 to remedy the situation, but the bills got killed in review by none other than the defense department, citing National Security! Our only major rare earth metals mine reopened, only to go bankrupt in 2015. It has since reopened, but the ore is shipped to China for refining! One good point is that the Mountain Pass mine was scheduled to reopen the processing facilities late 2020, but full processing operations without the help from the Chinese rare earth refining giant corporation Shenghe Resources have been delayed to 2022
The idea was that we should change our electricity production into renewable sources, such as wind and solar.
Wind power uses a lot of rare earth metals to get the most efficient generators, all made by China. Wind power is about maxed out, that is, if you care about birds, especially eagles and raptors. The allowable bald eagle kill was upped from 1200 to 4200 a year for all U.S. wind turbines during the Obama administration. Killed golden eagles and storks has a S250,000 fine, paid by the electricity users, and if we build it out more, we may exterminate some species.
Solar power looked promising until pollution was taken into consideration. China added 53 GW solar capacity in 2017. The forecast for this year i 45 GW, and for next year 35 GW.
The efficiency of solar panels are drastically reduced by the layer of soot accumulating daily from air pollution. They have to be cleaned daily with water, and water is in short supply in northern China. The yellow river no longer reaches the ocean during large periods of the year, all water is spoken for. In southern India a solar farm used up so much water that the wells went dry and there was no more water for agriculture and people, except during the monsoon season. Germany has given up on their solar program except for special needs. The best places for large solar farms in the U.S. are in Arizona and Nevada, both are having severe and growing water problems. In addition, that is not where the energy is needed, so transmission losses must be taken into account, as well as the need to expand an increasingly vulnerable and in many parts undesirable national grid.
I am not against solar panels, and as soon as we are freed from total Chinese dominance on the material used in solar panels we should install them in open spaces, such as parking lots around factories and shopping malls, wherever there is adequate sunlight. Park the cars under them and the summer heat will be so much more bearable, and in the winter you will not have to scrape the windshield. When it snows, solar panels do not work anyway.
Burkholders grocery store on Rt 45 in central Pennsylvania, complete with solar panels over the parking lot.
Where it rains, China pollutes. The Yang -Tse river carries nearly half the plastic waste that is dumped in the ocean. It can be stopped, but it will consume a lot of energy, both man-power and electricity to do all the cleanup.
The most practical solution is found in creating a massive effort in developing and installing Thorium nuclear power. Here is a list of reasons why we should jump on the opportunity to solve the energy crisis:
It started innocently enough. In 2012 the California power demand was nearly constant, with power varying 20% from maximum to minimum hourly demand.
Then California decided to have 50% of renewable energy by 2030, mostly by solar and wind, and passed it into law, but the hydroelectric capacity could not be increased due to “environmental concerns”.
The push for renewable energy has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, so the goal may be met in 2020, not 2030. There is one major problem.
What can be done when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? The electric need must still be met. And therein lies the problem. The sun only shines during daytime, and there is already a surplus of energy in the middle of the day. This affects the prices for peak power, so mush so, that wind and sun generated energy has to pay to feed the grid. They are heavily subsidized, so as long as the amount they have to pay is less than the subsidy the grid will be fed, and the base generation will have to be lowered to stabilize the grid. The prices range from minus five cents/kWh to about 55 c/kWh. (The peak price has been as high as 98 c/kWh during peak demand.
Burt that is only part of the problem. The non-renewable electricity providers will have to double the electricity production every day between 5 and 8 p.m. every day. Using capacitors to even out the grid variations solves 0.3% of the problem.Some can be done by using the dams for power generation, but the grid is not built to handle the drastically increased demand, and environmental fights makes it impossible to build out the grid. In addition, the dams are far away from the areas that need the electricity, in other words, it is a mess.
And the consumer is left to pay the extra costs, and the taxpayer is left to pay the extra subsidies.
Talking about subsidies: Electric cars are subsidized to the tune of 2500 to 7500 dollars, and they are recharged when? They are driven mostly during daytime, and when people come home they are put in the charger – at 55 c/kWh to the utility.
Clean energy is not cheap, and it is not clean since the non renewable electric production capacity still has to be fully built up for the time when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
One of President Obama’s pet green companies has filed for bankruptcy.
After millions in subsidies the 135 remaining people were laid off. Watching a bankruptcy process unfold is like watching the slow death of a company. Evergreen Solar, which announced the bankruptcy filing back in August, has sold is core assets for $6 million and some shares of the buyer, China Private Equity Investment Holdings. Evergreen Solar is really bankrupt Got millions in subsidies – all is corrupt. Many green jobs were lost – went to China – at cost. Get rid of Obama! The ante is upped.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 
