Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 2 Thorium Fuel Cycles

Introduction

Part 1

Although most nuclear reactors in the world today use fuel cycles based on the element uranium, it is also possible to use thorium as a source of nuclear energy with some types of nuclear reactors. A thorium-based fuel cycle has several advantages over one that is based on uranium, making it an increasingly attractive option to invest in from an energy production standpoint.



Thorium is element 90 in the periodic table. Like uranium, thorium is a naturally occurring actinide metal that is slightly radioactive when found in nature. Although as many as 33 different isotopes of thorium are possible, the thorium that is found in nature is mostly thorium-232. Thorium ores can be found in abundance all across the world, particularly in India and the western steppes of the US. Since there is currently little use for thorium from a commercial standpoint, there has been little effort to exploit these resources.



By itself, thorium-232 is not fissile, but if a neutron source is provided such as uranium-235, it can "jumpstart" thorium-232 into a fission chain reaction by causing it to absorb a neutron and become thorium-233. Thorium-233 has a half-life of twenty two minutes at the end of which it emits an electron, causing it to decay into proactinum-233. After 27 days, proactinum releases a second electron and becomes uranium-233.

232Th (n,γ) 233Th (β−) 233Pa (β−) 233U (n,2n)

Uranium-233 has a higher neutron yield than Uranium-235 when it undergoes fission, and therefore releases more energy per neutron absorbed. The decay of Uranium-233 would lead to the creation of numerous isotopes that would be useful from a medical and industrial standpoint and would be able to breed more uranium-233 within the reactor from the neutron irradiation of thorium-232. From a weapons-proliferation standpoint, the thorium-fuel cycle would be very difficult to divert into making fissile warheads. This is because proactinium can also decay into Uranium-232 which emits hard gamma radiation which is a hazard to people who would tamper with the reactor material in addition to the fact that although it is fissile within a reactor, it interferes with fast fission reactions like those within a thermonuclear bomb.

232Th (n,γ) 233Th (β−) 233Pa (n,2n) 232Pa (β−) 232U

Thorium-based fuel cycles have much in the way of economic potential and could be utilized by using off-the-shelf technology. The US experimented with thorium-based reactors during the molten-salt reactor experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the mid-1960s until the project was abandoned in favor of uranium-based light water reactors for political reasons. Russia, China, and India are currently looking into the viability of thorium for nuclear energy production, and India is currently using thorium in its pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and its liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs). Ideally, the full potential of thorium could be utilized in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) but it remains to be seen if the LFTR concept gains enough political momentum to allow it to be commerically realized.

Nuclear Technology Basics Part 1: Uranium Fuel Cycles

Introduction

Most reactors in the world today utilize the uranium fuel cycle to sustain fission, but there are other fuel cycles as well such as ones based on thorium and plutonium. Light water reactors (LWRs) typically have a once-through fuel cycle in which results in various degrees of spent fuel to be disposed of. Breeder reactors and various reprocessing centers can greatly reduce the quantity and half-life of material to be discarded, but nuclear reprocessing is banned in some countries because of errant political concerns rather than for any technical reason such as is seen in the US.

Uranium is a common element that is found in many locations across the world, usually in the form of Uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a yellowish-brown powder, and is often referred to as "yellowcake". Large deposits of uranium are found in Australia, Africa, Canada, Spain, Russia, and the US where it is mined and sent to an ore processing center. Uranium mines may be either open pit mines when the uranium is close to the surface, or in underground mining tunnels for deeply-buried deposits. Most uranium in the US and Australia is mined using in-situ leeching methods where the uranium oxide is dissolved from the surrounding rock in solution using water that is acidified by carbon dioxide. A LWR reactor requires around .2 metric tonnes of uranium oxide per megawatt produced for its continual operation.

The uranium isotope, U-235 is the primary isotope of interest for power generation. In chemistry and nuclear physics, an isotope of an element is an atom that has a different number of neutrons from the typical number of an atom from that type of element. Uranium has 33 different isotopes, and all of them are radioactive with varying degrees of radioactivity and half-lives. Only .7% of the atoms in naturally occurring uranium oxide are U-235 on average, while the most abundant isotope of uranium is U-238 which accounts for 99.28% of uranium atoms found in nature. Rarer still is the naturally occurring isotope of Uranium U-234 which is slightly more than half a percent of uranium found in deposits on Earth.

In order for mined uranium oxide to be viable for usage in a LWR it must be brought to a fuel fabrication facility where uranium oxide is converted into uranium hexafluoride where the percentage of U-235 is concentrated up to three percent. This is done either through the gaseous diffusion process or the centrifuge process. In either case, "tailings" are produced as a by-product of the process. Uranium "tailings" are largely devoid of the U-235 isotope and consist mostly of U-238. This "depleted" uranium is only weakly radioactive and has many commercial uses because of Uranium's density, ranging from aircraft counter-weights, radiation shielding, boat keels, and munitions. Although uranium itself has a toxicity comparable to lead from a chemological standpoint, uranium is not easily absorbed by living organisms if ingested. The greatest danger comes from the accidental inhalation of the material if it is finely ground into a powder, because the particles can become lodged in the lungs so respiratory protection should be worn when working with powdered uranium compounds. However this is true for many fine particulate substances and is not necessarily unique to uranium. The fears of "depleted uranium" are largely unfounded and baseless.

When the uranium hexafluoride has been enriched to the desired level, it is converted into uranium dioxide which is a fine powder. The uranium dioxide is mechanically pressed into small pellets for use as fuel within a nuclear reactor fuel assembly. The pellets are stacked within tubes made from a metallic alloy of zirconium and serve as fuel rods in the nuclear reactor vessel.

Within the reactor vessel, the Uranium-235 isotope undergoes nuclear fission. Uranium-235 captures and absorbs a stray neutron to become the unstable isotope, Uranium-236. U-236 commonly decays into isotopes of barium, tellurium, krypton, and zirconium and releases energy and two or three neutrons in the process.



These stray neutrons impact other nearby atoms, causing the process to be repeated. In addition, the decay of the daughter products of uranium can create isotopes of other elements as well. Three of the more common decay chains of Uranium U-235 are represented by these equations:

U-235 + n ===> Ba-144 + Kr-90 + 2n + energy

U-235 + n ===> Ba-141 + Kr-92 + 3n + 170 MeV

U-235 + n ===> Zr-94 + Te-139 + 3n + 197 MeV

Interestingly enough, the atomic masses of the isotopes created from the decay of uranium-236 are usually around the low 90s to the mid to upper 130s because of the law of Conservation of Mass in regards to matter. The total mass of the isotopes resulting from the decay of uranium-236 and the neutrons that are released equals a mass of 236, just like the uranium-236 that they decayed from.

After a year or so, 33% of the fuel rods within a nuclear reactor are removed and the reactor is refueled with new fuel to keep the fission reaction going. The spent fuel rods are submerged in a pool of water within the power plant so that they can cool down long enough for further processing and for some of the more radioactive, shorter-lived isotopes to decay. After a few years, the assemblies containing the spent fuel are taken out to be disposed of.

The fission products that were created during the nuclear fission process can be divided into short, intermediate, and long-lived half-life categories.The half-life of an element is the average amount of time for the atoms within a sample of material to have undergone radioactive decay into another element. Most of the fission products have short half-lives that are less than a year. Although many of these isotopes are highly radioactive, they undergo decay during their period in the spent fuel pool and do not present a problem from waste disposal standpoint. Isotopes with an intermediate half-life can be somewhat problematic as they can range anywhere from a year to a century or two and can emit moderately high levels of radiation such as with the case of strontium-90 and cesium-137. These elements can be transmuted into less dangerous isotopes through further neutron bombardment but it is much more cost effective to simply dilute them with inert compounds to the point to where their radioactivity no longer poses a problem. Isotopes with half-lives lasting longer than three centuries can make up to 20% of the spent fuel to be disposed of, but one must keep in mind the inverse relationship between half-life and radioactivity.

Although the half-life of some of these fission by-products can be up to several billion years, they are only weakly radioactive to the point of being barely above the background levels of radiation that all of us are exposed to in our daily lives. As a case in point, potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and it can set off alarms from radiation detection equipment. However, it is quite abundant in foods with large amounts of potassium in them, such as bananas and it is also found in our bones. However, it is very weakly radioactive as a person only gets an exposure of a few picocuries per year. Eating one banana a day for each day in a year would increase your exposure to radiation by 3.6 milirems per year and the average person receives several hundred milirems per year from naturally occurring background sources with no ill-effects.

Exposure to Radon Per Year By County (Red means high levels of radon)



New Cases of Cancer Diagnosed Per Year By County (High rates are purple)



In countries such as France that use nuclear reprocessing the useful isotopes are separated from the spent fuel assemblies. Since over 90% isotopes within a spent fuel assembly consist of un-fissioned uranium-235, and fissionable plutonium-239 this greatly reduces the volume of the material to be disposed of. The material from a spent fuel assembly can be reduced through reprocessing to a piece of material the size of a cigarette lighter with a half-life of three centuries. The fuel created from this process is known as mixed-oxide fuel, or "MOX" fuel. There are many different types of fuel reprocessing. The most common type is the PUREX method, although research is being conducted into "pyroprocessing" techniques.

Unfortunately, it is often politics that drive policy not common sense and the US is no exception. Although the once-through spent fuel disposal method is wasteful from the standpoint of throwing away a source of useful nuclear fuel, there is not much of it at all. There are three categories of "nuclear waste"; low-level waste, intermediate waste, and high-level waste.

Low-level waste consists of anything from pens and pencils from the offices within a nuclear power plant to the gloves and protective gear worn by personnel. Low-level waste from a nuclear power plant is often very weakly radioactive if it is radioactive at all, and is typically burned or buried close to the surface of a special landfill. Intermediate waste includes things like the actual components of the reactor itself in addition to the materials used in the construction of a nuclear reactor. There is usually not much in the way of intermediate waste to be disposed of and it is often buried in a shallow repository. High-level waste consists of the spent fuel that is marked for disposal.

This material is a metallic solid that has been encased in glass, lined with concrete, and sealed into an extremely durable cask. Tests have demonstrated the ability of these casks to withstand impacts with freight trains. Doomsday scenarios featuring terrorists stealing spent fuel material in order to construct bombs leave out the fact that the concentration of Uranium-235 needs to be enriched up to at least 90% for it to be weapons-grade material. Spent fuel does contain plutonium-239 which can be used for a plutonium bomb, but it is also contaminated with plutonium-240 which is a poison for a nuclear bomb as it absorbs neutrons without fissioning, effectively stealing the neutrons that would be able to strike plutonium-239 that would cause the rapid fission reaction. Fission would occur, but not in the rapid fashion that you would need it to for a nuclear bomb. To make things worse for a terrorist, it would be very difficult to separate the plutonium-239 from the plutonium-240 and it would require highly specialized equipment. It would simply be cheaper and easier to build a special reactor dedicated to producing weapons-grade material like most nations do.

Finally, the amount of high level waste to be disposed of is quite small. All of the high-level waste ever produced in the US as a by-product of nuclear energy could easily fit into a room the size of a high school gymnasium, just two stories high. Compare this to the mountains of coal ash and carbon dioxide generated by the burning of fossil fuels which will be just as toxic millions of years from now as it was the day that it was created.

In part two, we will be taking a look at thorium-based fuel cycles and how nuclear reprocessing works in detail. I hope that this post was easy to read and understand and that it was not too long or boring. Stay tuned!

All Fission Reactors Are Not Created Equal

For the next few days or so, I will be taking a look at the different types of nuclear reactors that have existed or have only been theorized about on paper. The reason being is that there are so many different potential reactor designs that it is often confusing to people outside of the field of nuclear engineering to determine how reactor designs differ and what the pros and cons of each design are. To make matters worse, the names of these reactors are often abbreviated to different acronyms making it even more difficult for laypeople to understand what the different terms mean.

This will be a bit of an undertaking, as there are literally hundreds of different reactor designs. Some have only existed on paper, others were only experimental prototypes, while others have been built but have since been decommissioned, either from age, lack of economic viability, or from politics. Although some reactor types are highly impractical or dangerous and have rightfully been consigned to the dustbin of history, there are some designs that would have been quite impressive from an economic and commercial standpoint.

At the moment, I am wondering how to proceed in terms of how I will talk about this. I am leaning towards a series of posts, with each post concerning a different "family" of reactor types based on what they use as their moderator materials. However, I am open to ideas from anybody who might offer suggestions.

First New Uranium Mine in Years

Phase I of the South Texas Palanga uranium mining project has been completed by the UEC (Uranium Energy Corporation) under-budget and on schedule. Phases II and III are expected to be completed in 2011. This marks the first time in several years that uranium demand has allowed for the opening of a new mining facility. Mining operations will commence using in-situ leeching methods, where water that has been acidified with carbon dioxide gas will be pumped into the mining site. This is what allows the uranium to be extracted from the surrounding limestone as the uranium is dissolved in the water when it is pumped out again during mining operations.

The economic activities of the uranium mining industry have been depressed for years because of the lack of demand for nuclear energy in the US since the mid-1980s. In the early 2000s the price of uranium bottomed out and it has only been in the last three years that the uranium market has been showing signs of recovery. As the price of uranium has increased since then, there has been a renewed interest in re-opening old mines and prospecting for new sources of high-grade ore.

Many people raise fears that the world supply of uranium will peak in 80 years. One must keep in mind that this estimate is based on existing production rates of uranium ore and nuclear fuel fabrication. There are many mines across the world that have been forced to close either through political pressure, or because existing world uranium demand could be easily met by a smaller number of mines. The amount of uranium required by most reactor types is quite small, especially when compared to the fuel consumption rates of fossil-fuel generators like coal and natural gas. The fissile isotopes of uranium are extremely compact compared to other energy sources. A single fuel pellet like those used in a nuclear reactor is the equivalent of 1,780 pounds of coal from an energy standpoint. Although hundreds of these pellets are used to fabricate fuel rods in a light water reactor, the amount of uranium required to fuel a reactor is still a rather tiny amount.

In the event of a large build-out of new nuclear reactors, it would not be too difficult to increase the production of uranium ore to meet an increased demand since uranium is such a common element. However, up until now there has been little need to do so. In fact, should the easily recoverable sources of uranium ever run out like the most dire scenario erroneously predicts, existing stockpiles of spent fuel could easily be reprocessed for more fuel. Finally, uranium can be extracted from seawater. Although the cost of recovering uranium from using this method would be roughly ten times conventional mining methods, it would still be economically viable as the operational costs of nuclear electricity generation are relatively insensitive to price increases of fissile material.

Potential New Markets for Nuclear Energy

Part of the slowly emerging interest in nuclear power has been taking a look at regions of the world that would be especially suited for building new nuclear reactors. Several countries in the Middle East such as Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in having nuclear energy programs. Iran has also been the focus of much news as of late over concerns that its current goal to expand the role of nuclear energy in its energy infrastructure might be a front for developing nuclear arms. However, the process of creating fissionable material for warheads is quite different than the process of generating electricity and a nuclear weapons program would be difficult to keep hidden.

In any case, the middle east would be well-served to invest in nuclear energy as many countries in the region depend heavily on fossil fuels for electricity generation which has negatively impacted the environmental and human health in the region in addition to complicating its political identity. In addition, many people within this area of the world live in arid conditions making agriculture, animal husbandry, and access to water for human consumption difficult. Part of the interest in nuclear energy in the middle east has been driven by its potential application for desalinization. Thousands of gallons of freshwater could be created daily from seawater using the waste heat from a nuclear facility for the fraction of the cost of other desalinization procedures.

In the British isles, Britain has been seriously considering new nuclear development as many of its existing nuclear facilities are aging as no new nuclear facilities have been built in years. This reflects a similar situation as we have seen in the US. As coal and natural gas have major drawbacks in regards to pollution from carbon dioxide and in the case of coal; ash and soot, the British government has started to re-evaluate the viability of nuclear energy in Britain's energy portfolio. Ireland has traditionally been vehemently against any sort of nuclear development choosing to rely on burning peat, low-grade coal, and imported natural gas. The rapid pace of economic development has lead to considerable demand for more energy in the nation, and Ireland has been mulling over the potential of nuclear energy to alleviate a potential energy shortage. Although anti-nuclear sentiments remain strong in the country, this may change as people become more educated about the inherent safety of nuclear energy as well as its minimal environmental impact. This is especially poignant when considering the amount of pollution that the burning of peat and fossil fuels causes when Ireland has recently become concerned about its environmental health.

Australia remains an important source of uranium yet its traditional stance against nuclear energy has prevented any reactors being built and has chosen to largely use coal for energy instead. The impact of Australia's large coal mines have scarred the landscape. The amount of carbon dioxide and particulate matter produced from Australia's coal plants is immense, especially when one considers that some of it is also very low-grade lignin which is even more polluting than bituminous coal when burned. To make matters worse, various "environmentalist" groups have recently put pressure on Australia's government to limit uranium mining and exploration yet remain strangely silent when it comes to the continual operation of Australia's coal infrastructure. There have been calls in Australia for the development of nuclear energy but it remains to be seen if Australia's defacto ban on nuclear energy will remain for the future as many countries in Europe have either lifted or stalled their moratoriums on nuclear energy.

Finally, Asia has been aggressively expanding its investment in nuclear energy, particularly China, Korea, and India. These countries are poised to be the leaders in new nuclear technological development as the nuclear energy market in the US has stalled. Although there has been renewed interest in building new nuclear reactors in the US, it pales in comparison to the rapid degree of nuclear development in Asia.

Nuclear Energy in Africa

It looks like Africa is showing a growing interest in investing in nuclear energy. Although many African countries have been plagued with political problems that have made stable economic development difficult, a thriving nuclear sector would be a boon to the continent and might help it overcome its economic hurdles.

Several African nations attended the International Conference on Access to Civil Nuclear Energy held in Paris and appear to be willing to work with France to expand their nuclear infrastructure. Nuclear energy is capital intensive but it has the advantages of reliability, high efficiency, in addition to all of its costs being upfront instead of being hidden like with fossil fuel-based energy.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy does not qualify for carbon credits through the "Clean Development Mechanism". This is largely a political position by the organization as these carbon credits can apparently only be used to build other forms of renewable energy such as wind turbines and solar plants. However, as nuclear energy is virtually a carbon-free energy source this is an unfortunate omission. An argument can be made that nuclear energy releases carbon dioxide during the construction and mining phases, but this is minimal and still less than the amount of carbon dioxide that is released during the construction of wind turbines and solar panels. Additionally, nuclear energy produces much more energy and requires much less land than a wind farm or a solar plant. Finally, the materials used in the construction of solar panels often contain toxic substances in addition to rare elements. This makes the anti-nuclear position of the Clean Development Mechanism grossly inaccurate.

Article on Thorium in Wired Magazine

Take a look

The LFTR design might be catching on after all.

Changing Minds, but is it Enough?

When I started this blog two years ago, it was out of a combination of frustration and anger at how quickly people dismissed nuclear energy like it was some sort of arcane and unholy type of technology. Even though the facts were otherwise, many people still opposed it tooth and nail as they either ignored the benefits or thought that the data itself was part of some sort of conspiracy promoted by "Big Nuclear". I was never against nuclear power at all, even when I was relatively misinformed about it but I did have some reservations about what to do with the spent fuel as I like many other people thought that it was dangerous and difficult to deal with. However, I still thought that was magnitudes better when compared to coal and natural gas. As these fuel sources were very dirty indeed and as it was the late 20th, early 21st century I thought that it was ridiculous that we were still depending on fossil fuels as our main source of energy. Yet I also knew that wind and solar power lacked the energy density and reliability to be able to produce the amount of electricity on a regular basis that a developed country like the US needed.

Then my eyes caught an article in Scientific American around 2005 talking about nuclear energy and what sorts of reactors could be built and the pros and cons of the different designs. I was fascinated as I read about designs that could be used to breed more fuel or greatly reduce the quantity and half-life of existing stockpiles of spent fuel as well as close the nuclear fuel cycle to ensure a virtually infinite and environmentally friendly source of energy. I also began to grow very angry, as the only thing holding nuclear technology back seemed to be a combination of NIMBYism, fossil fuel interests, and just the overall lack of will that would be needed to restructure our energy producing infrastructure.

I began to research nuclear power online as a hobby in addition to reading whatever I could find on it in various books and publications. My amazement was underlined by seething anger at how the US had let coal and natural gas expand and entrench themselves over the decades as we had not built a new nuclear reactor in this country since the 1970s. Our back was turned on nuclear power out of a combination of fear, pointless bureaucratic redtape, and the canceling of many planned reactor projects after the oil crisis thirty-seven years ago. This was all due to politics and scaremongering rather than a legitimate reason to condemn nuclear power.

This was a direct reversal of the attitude that characterized the previous two decades as nuclear powerplants were being built at a rapid pace and nuclear reactors were quickly adapted to be used for naval use. The cold war and a feeling of optimism towards nuclear science and technology spurred rapid development in this field and it also threatened to put coal power out of business. However, the nuclear industry was practically moribund by the early eighties through a misinformed but successful campaign against nuclear energy that had grown out of the fear of nuclear warfare and was helped along by fossil fuel lobbyists and their paid off politicians. Ironically, nuclear power has had the best safety record of any energy sector in the US and even across the world yet it had been rejected in favor of coal which kills thousands of people worldwide through its normal operation.

After seeing the ridiculous comments and hysterical fears surrounding nuclear power being touted by various "environmentalists" I decided to create this blog in the hopes of taking an honest look at nuclear power. This was part of an effort to help people realize the environmental benefits of an infrastructure largely based on nuclear energy as well as the fact that nuclear power is the only clean form of energy that can be used practically anywhere on earth and deliver a constant supply of energy regardless of weather conditions. Scaling back production and energy usage would never be the answer because as we increase our technological development, the demand for energy increases. However, it is through more technology, not less that we can hope to make a better world for everyone. The past is gone, but trying to revisit the past by rejecting technological progress would be foolish because the "past" presented by various primitivist and neoluddite groups is based on a highly idealized and impractical vision of what previous generations of humanity really faced. Ironically, the popularity of these movements has been aided by the technology brought to them by the internet and computer revolution. I would very much doubt that humanity would want to go back to the days before running water, electricity, heating, cooling, hygiene, sanitation, and modern medicine. We can thank all of these previous comforts for our greatly improved lifespans. A few hundred years earlier, a middle-aged man or woman of 40 would be considered elderly.

As I look around, I see that people are slowly starting to realize that nuclear energy is not nearly as bad as various sources portray it as being. There is a lot of misinformation and outright lies regarding nuclear technology as there are many organizations that have made it their business to vehemently oppose nuclear power on all fronts, especially when they have or are allied with entrenched fossil fuel interests. I have a cautious degree of optimism as I watch people starting to push back against this tide of nonsense and hope that we can start looking forwards to a clean, energy rich future again as nuclear power is the only option that we have that can deliver on this promise. We need to get the liquid fluoride thorium reactor development path up and running again after its cancellation during the early 1970's as this design shows a stunning degree of versatility and efficiency at practically little to no cost to the environment.

AREVA Discussion

Yes, I had my AREVA conference call in the morning yesterday, and it turns out that AREVA is stepping up its efforts to start building more EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) and PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) type reactors in the US. In addition, they are heavily pushing the VHTR (Very High Temperature Reactor) for the GenIV research path in the US in addition to the GCFR (Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor) in Europe, particularly France. Currently, AREVA has no plans to develop any thorium based reactors.

Although the VHTR would not be my first choice for the GenIV development path, it does have its advantages in the fact that it would utilize a much higher actinide burn up ratio in addition to being more efficient in terms of power output to fuel usage. Finally, one of the main reasons why AREVA is pursuing the VHTR is because of the high amount of heat that the reactor gives off during its operation that can be put to use for many industrial applications ranging from hydrogen production, petroleum distillation, and desalination. AREVA mentioned that one of the main challenges that they foresee is getting the design approved through the NRC, which is a notoriously fickle administration. The GCFR has been chosen for Europe because of the political viability of a closed nuclear fuel cycle which has traditionally met with some difficulty in the US. GCFR reactors can use many different fuel grades for energy including material that is left over from the operation of LWR (Light Water Reactor) and PWR reactors. The GCFR can be used as a breeder and it operates at a high enough temperature in that it can take advantage of the Brayton cycle.

It was a very productive and interesting meeting and I am glad that I was able to attend as I no longer have a class during Friday morning. I look forward to next month's topic and hope that this is going towards a greater role and acceptance of nuclear energy in our future. Once again, I thank AREVA for their time and efforts.

AREVA Conference Call

AREVA is hosting another conference call this week. It has been awhile since I have been able to attend one of these but I have had a Friday class last semester that prevented me from participating. Now that I no longer have any classes scheduled on Fridays for this semester this is no longer a problem.

I will put up a follow up post regarding the subject of the conference call and what I have learned for those of you who are interested. Once again, I have an opportunity to learn what is going on in the nuclear industry from inside experts. I am excited.

South Korean Companies Win Nuclear Bid

South Korea won against Areva in a bid to build four light water reactors. This was a huge victory for the nation as it will bring it recognition in the UAE in addition to proving that it is major world leader in nuclear technology. The reasons cited for the bid being given to South Korea over the French based company of Areva is because Areva has fallen behind schedule and gone over budget in its project in Finland. South Korea also underbid Areva by a significant amount which also was a point in its favor.

For more details, take a look at the Nuke Notes post by Dan Yurman and the original article on the Wall Street Journal.

Odds and Ends

I have added the informative blog, BraveNewClimate to my blog roll as it has been recommended to posters on the Energy From Thorium forum. The blogger, Barry Brooks does an excellent job in reporting on developments in climate science as well as critically examining the potential feasibility of "green" energy sources such as "renewables". Take a look at his December 17th post on the potential of the LFTR in Australia.

In other news, Florida might be making the shift from coal power to nuclear energy as Seminole Electric canceled its latest plan for a coal power station. As Seminole Electric has also been considering nuclear power as one of its future energy options, this might be a point in favor of nuclear power. Florida is relatively poor in natural gas, and transporting natural gas over long distances is an expensive undertaking.

The Economist on Gen IV nuclear technology

Alright my fellow nukeheads, take a look at this interesting post on different reactor types by the Economist magazine.

"The sixth shortlisted design, the molten salt reactor (MSR), works by dissolving nuclear fuel in a fluoride solution, which acts as both the fuel and the coolant in the reactor core. The molten salt, which has good heat-transfer properties and can be heated to temperatures above 1,000{degree}C without boiling, is moderated using graphite. The circulation of the fuel in this way eliminates the need for fuel fabrication and allows for continuous online reprocessing. It also makes the design well suited to the use of existing fissile material, which can be easily blended into the fuel mixture. And like fast reactors, the MSR can be designed to burn up many of the longer-lived byproducts of the fission process, resulting in nuclear waste that is much less radioactive than that produced by the once-through cycle."

The article is a pretty good introduction to several reactor designs and the technical aspects of each. I recommend it as a primer for those of you who are curious as to where we stand with nuclear research. Happy reading.

India: The Next Leader In Nuclear Technology?

India has been researching the use of nuclear technology at breakneck speed. India is relatively deficient in coal and it has a lot more thorium than uranium. Because of this, India is currently pushing the AEC reactor design, but it could just as easily develop the LFTR paradigm as well.

China is also planning a large build out for new reactors, but the Chinese are also pushing coal as well as there are quite a few large coal deposits in eastern China. The degree of innovation displayed by Indian nuclear researchers is impressive, as well as the fact that it could make India's economy a force to be reckoned with as cheap energy spurs technological development. In addition, India's nuclear program is not hampered with regulations against nuclear reprocessing like in the US. This puts America at a disadvantage once again as we risk being left behind in the dust in our failure to embrace clean nuclear energy.

Interestingly, when you look at many countries that have an abundance of coal such as the US, China, and Australia, they also have ample supplies of uranium and thorium. However, the availability of coal has lead to its promotion in the national policies of the energy agendas of these countries. This is in spite of the fact that coal causes massive amounts of pollution both from carbon dioxide and the contamination from heavy metals. Injuries and deaths from coal are also a common occurrence from everyday operation in the coal industry.

There really is no longer any reason for the continual use of coal as the baseload energy source of choice. We have had the technology to replace coal with nuclear power for decades, and new reactor designs such as the LFTR are even more impressive than traditional light water reactors. At this point, coal is the soot-covered chain that is holding us back from cheap, clean energy in the form of nuclear power.

Replacing Fossil Fuels by Using More Natural Gas?

One thing that I do not understand is why natural gas is being pushed so much by "environmentalists", particularly because natural gas does produce quite a bit of carbon dioxide when burned. Not as much as coal, mind you, but enough to be a major contributor of carbon dioxide pollution. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are hardly efficient and are basically a roundabout way of burning natural gas as natural gas burning generators have to take up the slack when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. There are also vehicles that run on liquified natural gas as opposed to gasoline. If we look at the annual estimated end use statistics for natural gas since 1949, you will see that consumption has risen greatly*.

Consumption Graph

Also, looking at this graph, you can see that the annual wellhead price for natural gas has risen sharply to meet demand since the year 2000*.

Price Graph

Natural gas is as much as a fossil fuel as coal and oil yet much of the renewables paradigm is leading to a rapid increase in natural gas consumption both on the atmosphere as well as depletion of consumers wallets. Because of the rapid fluctuations in price that natural gas is subject to, this increasingly expensive fuel energy source is an impractical alternative for running an energy grid. It will also make coal cheaper by comparison and lead to increased usage of coal in the long run as natural gas prices continue to climb at a much faster rate than coal prices.

To make a long story short, natural gas is a fossil fuel and like all fossil fuels has major disadvantages. The renewables movement only increases our reliance on fossil fuels in the form of natural gas and coal while derailing interest and funding from viable sources of energy such as nuclear power. I do not mean to come off as being harsh in regards to solar and wind power, but the only practical application that either of these two energy sources seem to have is for the operation of small appliances or for pumping water.

*As provided by the US Energy Information Administration.

Could This Be the Beginning of the Thorium Age?

Lots of exiting things have been happening on the horizon for the future of thorium-based energy, particularly in the form of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) concept. I would like to draw your attention to a recent Tech Talk sponsored by Google. Kirk Sorensen, an expert on the LFTR as well as being a brilliant man gave an informative as well as enlightening speech on potential of the LFTR in regards to the future of energy. It is quite a long video, but I strongly recommend that those of you who are interested in the future of clean energy watch it in its entirety. Not only can the LFTR provide a cheap source of plentiful, environmentally friendly electricity, the waste heat from an LFTR can be used for many applications ranging from an economic means of desalinization to the production of synthetic fertilizers and fuels with no need to use petroleum or natural gas. Hydrogen can be thermochemically produced from water at the operating temperature of an LFTR, and carbon can be extracted from the atmosphere. By doing this, you can synthetically produce alkanes that form the basis of organic chemistry such as the production of polymers and the refining process of petroleum into liquid fuels. By doing this, you could produce synthetic fuels like dimethyl ether or methanol and they would be carbon neutral when burned since the carbon used for their production was originally extracted from the atmosphere.



Next, there have been a whole series of LFTR-related recent posts over at the fascinating blog, The Nuclear Green Revolution run by Charles Barton, a man whom I admire. His father was a researcher over at the Oak Ridge project during the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) experiments of the 1960's before the MSR project was de-funded for political reasons. He offers a personal insight into both the convoluted history behind MSR-type reactors as well as the political issues that caused the project to be canceled in the first place. Mr. Barton has a series of essays looking at the economic means of lowering the costs of construction and operation of nuclear reactors as well as promoting new nuclear research.

Preface

1. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Economies of Scale or Serial Production?
2. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Advanced Materials
3. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Inherent Safety
4. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Nuclear Waste
5. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Labor Costs
5a. Addendum: Estimated US Energy Use in 2008: ~99.2 Quads
6. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Some Siting Considerations
7. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Investment Costs
8. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Research and Development

Confessions of a Nuclear Blogger, Part I

Finally, we have a post by davidwalters over at the Daily Kos comparing the economics of scaling behind the different potential sizes of the LFTR. He also has an interesting analysis of a means of their deployment as well as their potential to be used for naval transportation. An LFTR-powered cargo ship would be orders of magnitudes cleaner than ones that use conventional sources of energy, such as marine diesel which is one of the dirtiest grades of liquid fuel in existence.

Whither the Nuclear Renaissance?

I have heard mixed opinions from the Obama administration in regards to nuclear energy. Energy secretary Steven Chu seems to have a cautiously positive opinion of nuclear power. At the same time it seems the stimulus bill passed in February had the loan guarantees for nuclear construction written out of it while spending billions of dollars on "renewables" even though renewable energy sources by their very nature are both expensive and unreliable. I am left wondering what Obama really plans to do about nuclear power.

He at least acknowledged it during his campaign but when he said in needed to be "safer" it made me think that he was uninformed about how safe nuclear power really is. Very few industries in the world have safety records that could compare to nuclear energy in terms of the lack deaths or injuries in the years since nuclear energy was first developed. The two infamous incidents, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are frequently referenced by wide-eyed activists but the Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment dome that could have prevented the entire disaster as all new reactors across the world have now. At Three Mile Island, human error and lack of maintenance combined lead to a very serious malfunction, yet the safety systems built into the design of Three Mile Island prevented anybody from being injured or killed by the incident. To drive the point home even further, I have never heard of a single incident of somebody being injured or killed by spent fuel. Yet despite all of this, an embarrassingly large segment of the world population is eager to listen when activists paint the nuclear industry as being a modern day "Frankenstein's monster" poisoning the land and the nearby people with a mysterious force called radiation. Much of the public's imagination (Often fueled by science fiction B movies) has taken to thinking of radiation as being something that causes spontaneous and severe mutations such as animals growing to several hundred times their normal size or sprouting extra limbs. The more "informed" merely think that a nuclear power plant by its very nature will somehow cause the nearby populace to fall ill and be struck down by maladies such as cancer and radiation sickness.

Also, on the face of it, the idea seems rather absurd as to why Steven Chu seems unwilling to consider the MSR designs for Gen IV funding because of proliferation fears. The proliferation risk of an MSR design is quite low because the entire reactor would have to be shut down in order to divert the produced U233 into weapons production. The U233 will be contaminated with U232 and U234 that decay producing hard gamma radiation and terrorists working in a hastily constructed garage or cave would be hard pressed to steal enough for a bomb without instantly dying of radiation poisoning. There is also the question about how a terrorist would manage to steal liquid U233 from the molten core of the MSR which is surrounded by a massive field of radiation especially since you would have to shut down the MSR and reroute the plumbing of the reactor for such an operation. With that being said and done, it would be a lot easier to raid a radiology clinic for nuclear material.

Finally, the appointment of Gregory Jaczko as the new Chairman of the NRC has me concerned. Part of the problem of constructing new nuclear facilities is the inefficient and often nonsensical approval process that a power company must go through in order to obtain an operating license. I have heard some reports that Jaczko is in agreement with some anti-nuclear environmentalists groups and that he voted against renewing the operating license for the Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey as well as collaborating with Rep. Ed Markey (D) for imposing more stringent regulations on classifying spent fuel when the nuclear industry is already choking on overregulation in general.

This is not to say that previous presidential administrations have been any more open minded in regards to promoting nuclear energy. The Bush administration amidst many of its other problems paid lip service to nuclear power while simply allowing it to languish during its pursuit of fossil fuel energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. In fact, a large part of presidential candidate McCain's energy policy during his campaign was the promotion of "clean coal" of which there is no such thing. Opposition to nuclear power sadly seems to be a bi-partisan phenomenon in the US.

Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic here. I would like to get a discussion going as to what my readers think we might expect in regards to nuclear energy under this administration. Are nuclear energy promotion efforts really being noticed, or are they just a minority in the void of the internet that is too willing to pat itself on the back as coal and natural gas take center stage in the future as they have in the past?

Impressions of AREVA

I attended the conference call hosted by AREVA on the 9th and it was a very interesting experience. AREVA was looking into setting up a blog of its own detailing its activities and was looking for feedback from members on the Nuclear Advocacy Webring. AREVA's representative allowed us all to ask questions and converse with each other in order to come to a consensus about the direction that it should take as part of its outreach policy.

I was thoroughly impressed with the friendly and open atmosphere during the conference call. All of us shared an interest in the future of nuclear energy and combating the idiotic and silly myths that have surrounded this valuable energy source. AREVA hopes to schedule more meetings like this in the future based on the success of this one.

Finally, I offer my thanks to the nuclear advocacy webring for being so supportive to all of its members. It is important that we work together to help combat the anti-nuclear hysteria that is so prevalent in some parts of the developed world. If we ever hope to take the challenge of helping the environment seriously, then nuclear power is the way forward.

Areva Conference Call

I have been contacted by Areva today regarding a conference call meeting regarding bloggers supporting nuclear power. This is an honor, as I am very grateful for the opportunity to expand my knowledge on the subject by listening to some of the most knowledgeable people on this subject anywhere. I thank Areva for its consideration and for noticing my humble blog.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with AREVA, it is a French-based multinational corporation that specializes in nuclear energy production, nuclear fuel mining, spent fuel disposal, and fuel reprocessing. The majority of AREVA is publicly owned and traded by the French government, so it is largely a public company. AREVA is also part of the Global Energy Partnership Alliance (GNEP), so this is a very high profile company.

AREVA has a presence in several countries across the world. It owns uranium mines in Canada, South Korea, and Niger. It manufacturers reactor components for several countries with an active nuclear infrastructure, including the US. As part of a recent deal, AREVA has even started working on construction contracts with the surging Chinese nuclear power industry.

Once again, I sincerely thank AREVA for contacting me. I am glad that our efforts in the Nuclear Advocacy Webring are not going unnoticed. I will make every effort to attend the conference call.

Thoughts on Obama...

The Democratic candidate, Obama triumphed over McCain in the national election last night. In addition, the Democrats also won a few more seats in the Senate. I admit that I voted for Obama and Senator Durbin in my state despite my strong disagreements with some of the more extreme elements of the Democratic party.

As I have said before in a previous post of mine, both parties are by no mean perfect, but the Republicans frightened me even more. Since the 1980's, the Republicans seem to have strongly allied themselves with the religious right which has taken every opportunity to insert itself into the public education system. As a result, we still have fundamentalist Christians challenging the teaching of evolution in public schools in addition to pushing bible study classes and school-led prayer. The quality of science education has suffered greatly under their attacks as many school districts are afraid to even mention evolution in biology class for fear of being shouted down.

Religious fundamentalists have been chipping away at the separation between church and state little by little since the Reagan administration. They could hardly have asked for a better candidate to further their agenda when George W. Bush took office in 2000. He was an ignorant, scientifically illiterate, easily influenced man who could serve as their mouthpiece as they moved their goals forward. This allowed such disasters as the "faith-based initiatives" to be passed in addition to denying public funding for stem cell research.

Trying to define an embryo as a person is nothing short of ridiculous. It does not have an active consciousness, and it is entirely dependent on the uterine environment for its existence. Biologically speaking, the closest thing it could be compared to is a parasite. This is because if the placental barrier ever broke down, the immune system of the mother serving as the host body would consider the embryo as a foreign invader and promptly destroy it.

An embryo could be best said to be a POTENTIAL child, as it is not a child. People do not seem to realize that potential is not the same as actual. Everybody in the world has the potential to win an Olympic medal as well as win the lottery or be involved in other potential scenarios but it would be absurd to say that these would be a realistic probability for most of the populace. There is also the fact that the spontaneous natural abortion rate of human embryos is quite high, due to innate flaws in the structure of many embryos that render them non-viable.

With that being said, the stem cell research ban is religiously motivated, rather than having any sort of scientific or rational justification for being in place. Because of the enormous potential to medical science that stem cell research represents, it is inexcusable that the US government is not dedicating public funding to this field. There are thousands of millions of people each year that are in need of an organ transplant or suffer the amputation of a body part. If we had the technology to grow and regenerate failing or lost body parts, we would eliminate a major source of suffering for many people world wide. Unfortunately, religious fundamentalists do not see it that way and are attempting to ruin it for everybody else much like the perpetual wet blanket at your birthday party. We should deal with them the same way by promptly showing them the door.

Another nightmarish aspect of the current day Republican party has been its stance on civil rights. I do not understand how the Republican party considers itself to be the party of "small government" yet creates bureaucratic messes such as the department of Homeland Security, passes bills such as the Patriot act and the FISA bill, as well as create such idiotic legislation such as Proposition 8 in California. During the Bush years, we have seen the steady erosion of the constitution and other safeguards on government power. The executive branch under Republican rule with the aid of a do-nothing Congress has grown into a bloated monster with little in its way to stop it from trampling all in its path.

Indeed, the Republican party has gleefully aided and abetted Bush as he created detention centers that hold and torture people without charges, even with little reason for those people to be there in the first place. The same Republicans that chastised Clinton for the abusive power and overuse of executive privilege did not seem to mind when the Bush administration claimed executive privilege in order to avoid turning over incriminating evidence by court order. Even Vice President Cheney became so bold as to practically claim that his office was in a "fourth branch of government" and therefore not subject to the demands of bothersome executive orders.

I once had hope for John McCain way back in 2000 when he seemed to be a refreshing change of pace from the assorted undesirables in the Republican party. However, he soon became a continuation of the same failed policies as the Bush administration as his voting record was 90% congruent with Bush. To make matters worse, McCain could be seen embracing Bush in a big open armed hug as if he decided to leave all of that silly talk of "change" behind. For all intents of purposes, the "maverick" had now become another Republican steer. Even worse, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate after branding Obama as being "inexperienced.

Sarah Palin was little more than a gimmick in an attempt to woo away bitter Hillary Clinton supporters from the Democratic party. By choosing a female Vice President, this was an  obvious ploy to take advantage of demographic politics. This proved to be a mistake, because Palin's personality could be described as "vapid" at best and she had even less experience than Obama. To make matters worse, she was a fundamentalist Christian who voiced her open support of the religious right and young Earth creationism at every opportunity. Even if I had wanted to vote for McCain, there would have been a very real possibility that he would have died before the end of his term from health related issues because of his age and past medical history. This would mean that Palin would finish his term, which would have been a disaster of EPIC proportions.

This is not to say that I am not without reservations in regards to Obama. I did not like the way that he voted "yes" on the FISA bill that gave telecommunication companies retroactive immunity in regards to warrantless wiretapping  investigations. I am also not sure what he plans to do about the future of energy production as demand is only going to grow in the US.

The green wing of the Democratic party has been heavily pushing solar, wind, ethanol, and other forms of alternative energy for several decades now. After billions of dollars being funneled into "alternative" energy, it remains clear that it is still not a viable alternative for energy production at all. The only realistic options at this point are coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.

Nuclear would be the best choice as it provides low cost energy at a very efficient scale. As another advantage, it is a much cleaner form of energy compared to coal, oil, or natural gas. It does not produce emissions and the only byproduct of nuclear energy is a small amount of spent fuel that can easily be stored on site or in a geological repository like in Yucca Mountain. Uranium is as plentiful as tin and even at greatly increased levels of demand, it would last for millennia. The only reason why the price of uranium is going up at the moment is because much of the uranium fuel used in the US actually comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads and our stockpile is running low. The uranium industry is in shambles because of the rate of reduced demand since the 1970's which has artificially increased the relative scarcity of available uranium ore. If we actively pursued uranium exploration again and also reprocessed spent fuel instead of using a wasteful open fuel cycle, the price of uranium would once again drop dramatically.

Newer designs of reactors such as the molten salt reactor do not even have to use uranium as fuel, but can run on thorium instead (See my prior posts on the Molten Salt Reactor). Thorium is even more plentiful than uranium and a closed Thorium fuel cycle can be used to breed more fuel. Even better is the fact that the isotopes produced in the Thorium fuel cycle make it practically impossible to divert into producing fissile material for nuclear warheads. As an added bonus, the high heat of some of the newer designs of nuclear reactor can be taken advantage of to produce hydrogen for a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.

All is not rosy, however. The environmental movement which has allied itself with many members of the Democratic party remains vehemently anti-nuclear despite all of the benefits that nuclear power brings. It has used its lobbying clout to effectively kill off any active research into nuclear energy and set up multitudes of roadblocks in the way for the construction of new nuclear reactors since the 1970's. President Carter, a well-meaning but rather ignorant man, passed a ban on the reprocessing of spent fuel due to an irrational fear of his that it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. During the Clinton years, President Clinton cancelled all funding for the Integral Fast Reactor despite its advantages over the Light Water Reactor because of Clinton's anti-nuclear stance. The infamous Al Gore is also dead set against nuclear power as he continues to push for "alternative" energy that does not get anybody anywhere, except the natural gas industry. Indeed, the natural gas industry is rubbing its hands with glee as it sees business increase as natural gas powered generators are being built to take up the slack of wind and solar installations due to the unreliability of solar and wind power.

There is also the fact that in the US, coal is king. There is an existing incentive to build coal plants more than any other form of energy because of the cheap construction costs involved. Coal has massive external costs, but as with most things, short term goals are usually pursued over long term objectives no matter how much more sense it makes to think in the long run. Because coal is so deeply entrenched in our energy policy, the coal lobby has massive political clout in terms of influencing what paths to energy the US takes. Taking into account the amount of ignorance and gullibility as demonstrated by the average political leader as well as the average citizen, there is a very real possibility that the our main plan for the future will be investing heavily into the hoax that is "clean coal".

Obama did mention that he is not ruling out nuclear for the future energy plan of the US, but it remains to be seen if he actually intends to follow through on that claim. There is also some disturbing evidence that he might instead listen to the "alternative energy" segment of the Democratic party and promptly ignore nuclear power entirely like previous Democratic leaders have. However, despite all of the reservations I might have about Obama I still feel that he is a significantly better choice rather than risking putting the Republican party in power again for the time being.