WHY are Australia NOT involved in The Generation IV International Forum?

YET… we get smashed with Carbon trading taxes under the ‘ever changing face’ of government, due to a clear lack of understanding, knowledge and the scientific “experts”, charged with the duty of educating our fearless leaders?

Wake up Australia, your most precious assets are being used to create weapons to destroy you.

Thorium: a future energy source?
Thorium has been promoted as the super safe, green and clean, massively abundant fuel of the future. Kirk Sorensen outlines some of the possibilities that Thorium has to offer.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/2852923.htm

Using advanced reactors such as IFRs, LFTRs or ADRs to perform some dry reprocessing needs to be looked at but it is unlikely that these ideas will get fair consideration given the views of the entrenched bureaucracy here.

The problem is what I call “Soft Lysenkoism”. Essentially, the government (Blue Ribbon Committee) picks the winners and losers so as to determine the outcome of a “Virtual Race”.

That is why I proposed using a very public and probably messy RFQ process to give exposure to truly innovative companies that nobody has heard of. As things stand, I don’t have much confidence in our government operating behind closed doors in cahoots with the established LWR suppliers.

You are probably right; I need to shut up and leave it to the pros.

I am a retired physicist trained in nuclear radiation safety. The axe that I have to grind is the continued employment of some great colleagues who are still active in this field.

Many thanks for taking the time to respond.

Any ideas for getting the band wagon rolling?

Plenty, but I don’t think anything much will happen until the Blue Ribbon Committee reports in. That was Obama’s delaying tactic on used nuclear fuel management. The best short-term hope is to get a LWR-used-fuel recycling plant built in the US, and a metal-fueled fast reactor built in Russia, both within the next 5 years. That is what SCGI is currently working on.

By de-funding the expansion of Yucca mountain Obama has released $90 billion for other uses but at the same time he has created a problem because we have run out of space for spent LWR fuel rods. Ergo, we need to get innovative and come up with a way to diminish the inventory of higher Actinides while expanding nuclear power generating capacity . I would like to suggest that instead of putting up loans to encourage the building of LWRs, the Obama administration should encourage new designs.

The US government should invite competitive proposals from private companies to build the following:

1. A 1 GWe reactor which can consume waste that was destined for Yucca mountain. Your website mentions LFTRs that have this capability but there may be other options.

2. A dry re-processing reactor capable of delivering at least 200 MWe of electricity as a by product. I did not see GEM*STAR listed on your web site but that would be a contender.

While I like IFRs too, the US program was de-funded a while ago and the French recently killed the Super-Phenix. The political hurdles may be too high.

Any ideas for getting the band wagon rolling?

Also, what’s going to guarantee that lower cost manufacturers would not take your lunch once you figure out how to do it? The safer course seem to be to involve such low cost manufacturing countries to begin with.

First, it’s clear that costs may be high, but not THAT high that it makes it prohibitive. When or if Aust. gets around to building nukes, and since this generation of nukes are standardized, I expect prices to drop, not go up as expertise in construction is accrued, thanks largely to the Chinese.

Secondly, there facts and there are facts. Plutonium is weaponizable. So what? Are we afraid that a country like Australia is going to set up a secret factor in the Outback and turn out nukes? Really? Be serious. This is a straw man argument of Oz.

Thirdly, nuclear power plants can’t “explode” and the new ones are about 1,000 time safer than any in the current fleet of LWRs.

Fourth, I agree, LFTR’s time is now and we should put the bucks toward deploying it. But unfortunately it’s also tied to Gen III reactors, IMHO, and others as well, in order FOR the public to accept LFTR.

I disagree. It is precisely that conventional nuclear plants cost too much to construct; that Uranium and Plutonium are weaponizable; that Uranium fuel is growing scarce and is too expensive; that other conventional nuclear plants can “explode” and are therefore feared by citizenry; that waste products have many tens of thousands of years of hazardous existence before becoming safe; etc., etc., that the case for LFTR has to be made now before other nuclear energy plants give the nuclear industry another black eye (or worse)! The time for LFTR is now!

First step should be to build nuclear power plants any way we can. We can afford the luxury of arguing about which system is best when we have climate change under control.

Indeed. It’s like discontinuing a habit of hitting one’s own head with a hammer. Should we stop self-hammering and go to the beach? Stop self-hammering and get a job? Maybe stop self-hammering and start reading a good book … there are many options, and they aren’t as mutually antagonistic as you might think.

(How fire can be domesticated)

In my view, the conspiracy theory allegations of hiding facts about the IFR and government cover-ups by some don’t serve this community in what really used to be a common cause to just save the climate as fast as possible, LWRs included, which can form a synergy with IFR (free fuel) and LFTR (U-233 charge breeding).

Unless you’re sitting on a process to reliably extract the uranium and thorium present in coal, then no, it doesn’t obtain its fuel from coal. As I said, LFTR relies on the Th-U cycle, not the U-Pu cycle of more conventional reactors (xWR, Prof Brook’s beloved IFR, LMFBR, et al).

Such standardisation as you advocate is behind the gains in reactor cost and time seen in Korea and Japan, and starting to be seen in China.

Just so I understand it, the generation system, you’re proposing obtains it’s fuel from coal, is that correct? In other words the reactor isn’t uranium based but it’s coal based. Do I understand it correctly?

The reactor in question runs on thorium. Thorium is a fertile fuel, not fissile, which means that in its natural state it will not fission. To convert thorium into a fissile fuel, it needs to be exposed to a source of neutrons. By circulating a blanket of thorium salts around the reactor core, the excess neutrons produced in the reactor are absorbed by the thorium in the blanket salt, which converts it to U233, the fuel used in the reactor. Its a very neat and beautifully balanced process which gives excellent neutron economy and complete fuel burnup. A 1GW power station would use a bit less than 3Kg of fuel per day.

I’m not an engineer and have a finance background.

Just so I understand it, the generation system, you’re proposing obtains it’s fuel from coal, is that correct? In other words the reactor isn’t uranium based but it’s coal based. Do I understand it correctly?

Thanks in advance.

Peter Lang’s comment

I find the discussion about Gen IV is too technical, reinforces the view that there is a long way to go before it is commercial…….

I think there is a good point there, Peter.

However I would argue that necessity is the mother of invention.

I would suggest my plan with some obvious input from others :-)

The fact is that the modern world is heading towards reactor based energy and with time, say over the next 10 to 20 years, the price of reactor installation will fall dramatically as the structure moves away from essentially bespoke type installation to relatively large off the peg, which is when you begin to see economies of scale and competitive pressures push the price dramatically down.

We have seen evidence of this all through economic history since the advent of the industrial revolution. Cars were once transport for the rich until Henry Ford showed up. Recently we have seen this in action with large-scale plant installation with the Chinese steel furnace. The Chinese developed a no frills furnace that cut the capital cost by 60% and they are busily installing these in China and around the world now. The Chinese have revolutionized the installation of steel furnaces believe it or not. The same will happen with reactors: I have no doubt.

Why don’t we roll the 1st phase of the ETS into a plan to install X number reactors by 2030 that will be equal to the targeted emissions reductions at that point in time planned under an ETS. We should begin seeing a drop in price from about 2015 onwards. The bulk of the installation should be between 2020 and 2030 to take advantage of the drop in the capital costs. From then on proceed methodically to adopt the last phase of conversion getting us to zero emissions by 2050.

The other interesting thing I have heard was from a BMW engineer in that BMW along with the other 3 large German carmakers are betting strongly that hydrogen will be the fuel of choice beyond 2025 and they see hybrid engines as basically an interim solution. BMW expects their engines will be hydrogen based from 2025 onwards.

By 2050 our electricity production and nearly all our road transportation could really be emissions free without any huge reduction to our growing living standards.

One other thing I have been told and this could be corrected, as I have no way of knowing. The ETS in its current structure is unworkable (forgetting of course the large inefficiencies it would create with rent seeking all through industry. Government s don’t do rent seeking very well).

The problem I’ve heard is that the combination on renewables with coal-fired plants makes it impossible to reach the targets they set by 2020. The problems are several.

1. Unlike the US we essentially have a north/south grid presenting problems in terms of where you place renewable installations.
2. Our weather/climate is experienced in a very large radius, which means renewable would have to be placed very diffusely and away from the grid further adding to the cost of energy.
3. Renewable energy is of course transient which means that affects the ratio of renewable to conventional energy production.

The last point is important as coal fired plants reactivity is very slow which means the maximum amount of renewable energy that can be put into the grid is far lower than the ETS planned. It’s more like 7% max rather than 20%. Other places have nuke energy where reaction time is basically almost equal to the flick of a switch.