I like the idea, but this part

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•The NRC shall have no licensing or oversight jurisdiction upon the entrants nor shall any other federal agency or instrumentality have the power to curtail, prevent or interfere with the construction and operation of said plant.

simply won't fly. Doesn't mean that I don't like it, but I don't think it'll fly because people are generally (and ignorantly) afraid of ANYTHING with the word "nuclear" in it. What happened at Fukushima this year didn't help. Yeah, yeah, I know, the LFTRs CANNOT melt down like that. Nor is the U-233 much of an issue because it is so difficult to make into a nuclear weapon (due to the presence of U-232, which is extremely dangerous). I'm also not much worried about a for-profit company failing to adequately safeguard this stuff - according to Wiki, the historical production cost is between $2 million and $4 million per kilo - NOT safeguarding it would be the height of stupidity, completely aside from any safety issues. Anyhow, maybe the legislation authorizing this would include provisions to seriously streamline the NRC approval process (to something like 3 months, maximum) while also seriously degrading the ability of the NRC to disapprove for non-scientific reasons (and we KNOW that the science behind LFTRs proves that they are very safe).

What you need is a major candidate to get behind this. Obama certainly won't. I don't think that Romney will, as he's right now more about not going out on a limb than anything else, hoping that Newt makes a big mistake and implodes, leaving him as the last man standing. The rest of the Republican candidates frankly don't have a chance. So, on this issue, we're left with Newt for this election cycle. Whatever one's criticisms of him (and many are quite legitimate), he is clearly the most innovative thinker among those that actually have a chance to be elected (sorry, Karl, but Bill Still can't and won't be elected - what Libertarians have never understood is that they have to build their party from the bottom up, not from the top down. Even if he were to be elected, how many people in Congress would owe him favors, etc.?). Newt, for all of his faults, is very open to new ideas if they make sense - and this one DOES. I didn't even know about LFTRs until your first big thread about them, and I have done a lot of reading about them since - and there's no question that LFTRs fueled by thorium from coal, some of the energy of which would be used to liquify that coal, is THE solution to our energy problems (and a host of others - think of the plants that would have to be built and maintained, as well as other infrastructure necessary to build 50 or 100 of these plants. That is LOTS of jobs, HERE, and lots of money not going overseas to people that hate our guts). Bravo for coming up with this idea!

Well, it's a great idea. HOWEVER:

"The rules for the contest are:

The NRC shall have no licensing or oversight jurisdiction upon the entrants nor shall any other federal agency or instrumentality have the power to curtail, prevent or interfere with the construction and operation of said plant."

Karl, 10 CFR is in fact US Code - it's law, and you can't wave your magic wand and make it go away. The process for making that happen is not simple, and certainly not as cut and dry as stating it in a contest rule...

Now, if you first make all the needed changes to USC... But then again, we all know that this entire kleptocracy goes toward retaining vested interests in their positions of power, so this is a tough uphill battle. I do agree with your premise, though.

I think I understand your proposal, but I'm having trouble answering a couple of basic fundamental questions.

Perhaps I missed it. But How, exactly, does Haliburton, Solyndra, or Goldman Sachs benefit from this? /sarc

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Karl, 10 CFR is in fact US Code - it's law, and you can't wave your magic wand and make it go away. The process for making that happen is not simple, and certainly not as cut and dry as stating it in a contest rule...

You pass this as a LAW. There goes that problem.

Lack of reading comprehension, especially when it appears to be intentional for the purpose of obstructionism and bomb-throwing = loss of posting privileges, from here on out.

The oil, coal, and U based nuclear industies would be eligible for the prize also and could be viewed to have a head start.

So 50 CTL plants gets us halfway to energy independence (assuming our current oil production of 5 million barrels a day never declines). Where will these 50 CTL plants be located? Montana, Wyoming, and Barry's home state of Illinois?

India is working on a Thorium plant, hopefully a good start.
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newene....

One per state for openers.

And then we do it again. Now we have two per state.

Any state that tries to obstruct this (or actually does so) is barred from interstate electrical grid connection. Guess what -- Congress CAN do that, as it is empowered to regulate interstate commerce (specifically and constitutionally.) If Mexifornia doesn't want 'em, that's fine -- let them figure out how to generate power within their own borders because they won't be able to get any across a border with other states.

And then, suddenly, we have the ability to walk off from half of our DOD spending (foreign portion used to secure access to that oil) and guess what -- in one year the capital cost of the entire program is recovered into the domestic economy.

Will you look at that.....

Dool: India intends to use thorium as a fertile material in a conventional cycle reactor using water as a moderator, not a LFTR. While that helps with the fuel issue it gets you none of the advantages of the LFTR design.

What exactly does this level of coal production entail? Assuming this is even a possibility in the present day political/ecological environment, how does this affect our coal consumption? The increase in coal consumption for the F/T process on a large scale is going to increase energy usage in and of itself for the vast increase in mining operations.

I like the idea and wish we had started on it 20 years ago, but my enlightenment here has made me quite jaded when it comes to getting anything done of this scale and scope with our present political and banking stoogery.

Ive been studying the energy/oil problem for quite some time. My first issue would be how you overcome the powerful lobbyists and special interests. My second concern is for the Nuke side of things. With what has happened in Japan the momentum for any real future with nuclear has been utterly destroyed and likely for some time. Saying we will just make it LAW..is not only optimistic, I believe it's naive when you consider the inability of our lawmaking bodies to act, let alone on something as big as this.

There is reality on the one hand, and then there are what I like to call science projects on the other. This one presently falls into the latter category for many reasons, but mostly due to a perception that BAU within the oil/NG industry(and the public in general) will solve ALL our problems with the right application of capital...IE "drill baby drill".

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What exactly does this level of coal production entail? Assuming this is even a possibility in the present day political/ecological environment, how does this affect our coal consumption? The increase in coal consumption for the F/T process on a large scale is going to increase energy usage in and of itself for the vast increase in mining operations.

Nothing different than we're doing now. The replacement of existing coal-fired power plants with the LFTRs for electrical generation is balanced (within reasonable uncertainties) by the use of the coal for synfuel.

It's reasonably close to neutral in terms of coal extraction rates against current consumption.

Karl, I did not say it wasn't a good idea, I like it. I'm daunted by the legal challenges to going around 10 CFR. I'd like to see this line of development happen, but I'm more than a little doubtful of ever seeing the needed changes posted in the Federal Register.

If you modify your proposal to specifically include NRC in the process, it may have a chance. Let the regulatory body do its job. I just don't think an end run around them is practically achievable. Why did you include that part? Is it your concern that they would be obstructionist? If that's it, I'm merely pointing out that you cannot end-run the USC by passing a law that contradicts it. It's just not that simple.

One issue that we need to be concerned about is the economic viability of the plant.

Is there any way to guard against creating a white elephant that meets the prize criteria (1 gigawatt/year of electricity) and then is mothballed as a white elephant thereafter?

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If you modify your proposal to specifically include NRC in the process, it may have a chance. Let the regulatory body do its job. I just don't think an end run around them is practically achievable. Why did you include that part? Is it your concern that they would be obstructionist? If that's it, I'm merely pointing out that you cannot end-run the USC by passing a law that contradicts it. It's just not that simple.

The NRC IS explicitly obstructionist. The killing of Yucca was done in a documented manner of unlawful interference and obstruction. That won't change.

You most-certainly can void the CFR with explicit legislation -- the order of things is:

Constitution -> Statute -> CFRs

If you write a Statute that changes or eliminates a section of the CFRs, it is controlling law. This is done all the time and there is nothing unusual about it. Sections of the CFRs come into existence as a consequence of enabling Statute -- and are removed the same way.

For those not familiar with F/T process...

http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/ener....

Pay close attention to the slide on Global current F/T fuel production...its 160,000 bbls/day. Germany did 124,000 bbl/day at the height of production during WWII.

Karl,

My take on this is that you are going to change coal consumption quite a bit more than you claim. I need to go do some math on that one and it might take a while to gather the data to do it. I understand the offset with current coal generation plants, but on the scale you are talking about, at least replacing that much oil usage, this isnt simply a one to one replacement. I also believe you are going to run up against a wall with regards to CO 2 liberation and the lobbyists on the Climate change side. Another huge stumbling block to this decent idea.

Flappingeagle wrote..

I'd make the awards 10B, 6B, 3B or maybe 10B, 6B, 4B. I'd do that only becuase I would want to make sure that there are three firms going for the prize. Making the 2nd and 3rd place prizes a bit larger would help to make that happen.

If the plants are only profitable to build if some kind of government prize money is offered then the technology is a dead end and shouldn't be encouraged.

If the technology works then it will be profitable for private companies to build them and they will start doing so once the barriers to entry into the market are removed.

If the contest was a success more than three companies would enter. None of them would be guaranteed to win any money so their investors would insist that the business plan was viable without it. The prize money would truly be a bonus for getting it done first.

Even when you have a commercially viable design, deployment is still going to take quite a while. LFTR can only produce about 10% excess U233 so it will take 10 reactors of a given size running for a year to supply fuel for the eleventh. Presumably that problem can be mitigated by using plutonium to start new LFTRs, but even that will be a limited source of fuel.

Apparently, the US has enough U233 stockpiled to start one 1GW LFTR, but there are plans to denature it by mixing it with large quantities of U238.

The Google Tech Talk by Dr. David LeBlanc goes into some detail on the technical problems associated with deploying molten salt reactors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35....

Time's a-wastin' folks. There isn't much time left until our capacity to supply oil simply can't meet the demand. Then oil IS going to get real expensive.

Swarf_maker wrote..

Presumably that problem can be mitigated by using plutonium to start new LFTRs, but even that will be a limited source of fuel.

The reactor can run on U-235 or even plutonium for the first year or so while it's breeding U-233. The Oak Ridge reactor successfully ran all three of those fuels through the same core.

Think of it like the octane ratings for gasoline. Engines are designed to work best for one of the three options but most automobiles can also use the other two without any problems.

I thought the math might be an issue...

We currently produce about 1.2 billion tons of coal in the US annually. Some of that is exported and NOT used in Electrical generation.

The conversion factor for 1 ton of coal/synfuel is about 1.25. We have the coal, but to do anything meaningful towards getting off of oil, we need to ramp production SIGNIFICANTLY. I'd say that increasing by a factor of 2 is probably impossible from both a regulatory AND an infrastructure standpoint. Increasing mining operations INCREASES energy usage. While Im NOT AGAINST THAT, it needs to be factored into the equation and I havent even done that yet. Coal does not have an equivalent energy content in BTU's to that which oil does.

Like I said, there are science projects, and there are realities. The reality is this IS a good idea, but its not a probable or likely one until oil gets far more costly.

Wrong Pilot... Again for each LFTR you close a coal plant.

I ran the math a while ago in a ticker... Or buy Leverage its in there too.

Ps this plan is co2 NEGATIVE.

I guess I need to see that math Karl, its not passing the smell test for me. We produce X amount of coal and have X amount of reserves. Im going with current US production and simply doing the conversion. Tell me how thats wrong?

Meanwhile I'll go searching.....

I do plan on getting leverage.

Again the LFTR replaces an existing coal plant. The coal is used for its thorium content and synfuel instead of being burned to make electricity. The entire thing is roughly coal neutral and sharply co2 negative

Abn0rmal wrote:

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The reactor can run on U-235 or even plutonium for the first year or so while it's breeding U-233. The Oak Ridge reactor successfully ran all three of those fuels through the same core.

Yes, I understand that the type of fissionable material doesn't matter. However, I suspect that it might be faster and less costly to breed plutonium to fuel new MS reactors than to enrich uranium. The problem is that, globally, the number of large reactors needed is not in the order tens but in the order of thousands. That is a LOT of fissile fuel regardless of the type - just to get the thorium breeding process up and running.

Indeed. Fund research and you'll get research; reward results and you will get results (and if you don't, you've lost nothing). Sean Gabb had an idea very much like this around 2006, though his intention was specifically to avoid nuclear power: http://www.seangabb.co.uk/?q=node/267

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Establish a prize of £10 billion, to be paid from our taxes, for any person or persons who can demonstrate some cost effective means of home electricity generation. This would be like the Act of Queen Anne that encouraged the development of means to measure the longitude. The winning technology would be placed immediately in the public domain.

I like Abn0rmal/Karl's idea, but also Gabb's; that home electricity generation is horridly inefficient now (at least, in England, in lieu of a means of extracting electricity from mediocre weather) doesn't mean that it can't be without the right incentives. I'd also be in favour of scaling the Abn0rmal/Karl solutions down (which, as I gather, is much more feasible with molten salt reactors than it is with uranium reactors). Gabb again:

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Big electricity generators, whether nuclear or conventional, and our general fuel requirements are all controlled where not managed by the state. Whether by taxation or by bribes or by jobs for placemen, they are a source of enrichment for our ruling classes. They are all a means of direct social control. If our rulers do not wish us to travel about so much, or if they wish us to use other forms of transport than the motor car, they increase petrol taxes. They are able to encourage preferred forms of enterprise by waiving fuel taxes or waiving subsidies. The mere fact of their control puts us in a subordinate position. We feel uneasy in the face of a power that is ultimately able to deprive us of gas and electricity. We look to that power for a continuance of supply, and are used to begging action if we do not like the prices charged.

The great thing is that we could do all three (small-scale home generation, liquid salt, Fischer-Tropf) and still spend far, far less than we are going to spend on green boondoggles over the next few decades...

The syn fuel portion of the plant could fund the completion of the LFTR. If we built on existing coal fired power plants. The rail lines are in place now. If we start with a good plan the F/T could be in full production very soon. Once its running funding is not going to be an issue. The steam turbines are running now. Some power plants could be converted to hot synfuels. Then run on LFTR once its completed. This also gives us a more robust system.

As to the water issue sewage. F/T converts carbon to fuel. Lots of stuff has carbon in it. The use of sewage may allow for changing the crack %.

It may take some time to get the LFTR to the high quality unit we want. But there is no reason we should wait for it. Some of the payoff 60$bbl could be had very soon. The LFTR is half of our energy solution and brings down syn fuel costs by to large an amount to be left out. I think of these two technologies as a set. Both can stand on their own. A good plan would keep this in mind.IMO