The Energy From Thorium Foundation » "Future of Energy" Posts at Forbes, July 26-31

Aug 01, 2011

by Kirk Sorensen

After writing a guest post on a Forbes blog in March, I was invited to start my own blog on Forbes and have welcomed the opportunity. I called my Forbes blog “The Future of Energy” and I hope that my posts will be entertaining and informative, and will capture the thrill and excitement that I feel when looking at the possibilities of nuclear fission as our future source of energy.

July 26: BRC Set to Endorse Interim Storage

This post captures some of my thoughts relative to the release of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s draft report.

July 27: A Simplified Nuclear “Waste” Digester

July 29: A Simplified Nuclear “Waste” Digester, Part 2

A recent paper from ORNL motivated these posts, about the liquid-chloride reactor and its potential for safer fast-reactor technology than sodium-cooled, solid-fueled fast reactors.

July 30: Is Fissile Material Worth its Weight in Gold?

July 31: Fissile Material has the Midas Touch

And the answer keeps getting better…

14 Comments

Jeff S. August 1, 2011 at 10:30 am Reply

Kirk, you should do a "Midas Touch pt. 2" for the Forbes Blog, where you explain (as you have in one of your videos), how after you've gotten the valuable energy out of Uranium and Thorium, you are left with rare, valuable elements like Rhodium, etc. It's like burning oil, getting energy, and the exhaust is even more valuable than the raw oil. It really is amazing the economic value of a kilo of U or Th - I haven't done the math, but I think it's quite probable that a "ki of Uranium" is even more valuable than a "ki of Coke".
Andrew Jaremko August 1, 2011 at 11:16 am Reply

Kirk - congratulations on your Forbes blog and your posts. It's a great way to reach and educate the financial and business community, which is what nuclear energy sorely needs. Have you considered having Rod Adams do some guest posts explaining his view of energy competition? The fossil fuel industries want to keep manufacturers and other businesses in thrall to them just as much as they want to keep the consumer in thrall. I'm sure you'll also post on the new NRC report that Rod discusses in his Spreading Calm, Certainty, and Reassurance About Nuclear Energy (counteracting focused FUD) post. Congratulations on extending the reach of the pro-nuclear community!
Peter Lykke August 3, 2011 at 6:46 am Reply

Jeff S, you are absolutely right: It's all about proper marketing. Keep the message simple, highlight the anecdotes and maybe play a little on the uncertainty of the oil future. A good example of this is "Thorium - the green energy" and the story about thorium and the carbon cycle.
CHARLES HART August 3, 2011 at 9:23 am Reply

Nice! Good news indeed.
Roy Harvie August 4, 2011 at 1:12 am Reply

Yes, this series of articles in Forbes is excellent. I sincerely hope that a large portion of Forbes readers read your articles and start to push for funding of LFTR research. Speaking of which, what is happening with Flibe Energy? I read one poster who stated you already have financing, but I think you would have said so here if that was true.
Ed Crawford August 4, 2011 at 1:57 pm Reply

Kirk- Excellent blog and tie-in with Forbes. Jeff S. and Peter Lykke have hit on are really salient point: In order to make real progress on thorium energy, we (collectively) must do a much better job of telling the story. The Popular Science article in the July issue does a good job of simplifying the nature of thorium reactors. Much more of this type of coverage is needed. Make no mistake. What is required is nothing less than an all out campaign to overcome the inertia of the existing nuclear (and coal) industry's commitment to current technology. Huge investments have been sunk into technologies that were perhaps wise at the time, but which we now know are less than optimal moving forward. Keep up the good work. This blog is a good start.
Roy Harvie August 4, 2011 at 6:52 pm Reply

I spent some time on the Forbes website trying to find my way to Kirk's blog, and failed. The ONLY way I can read these excellent articles is via this website. This is very unfortunate as the whole idea is to present this material to a larger audience.
Michael August 5, 2011 at 1:42 am Reply

I just had a peculiar thought. Does our knowledge of pressure vessel construction allow the construction of one large enough to hold a commercial-grade nuclear reactor underwater? I ask because there was a proposal back in the '80s to build nuclear reactors with large reservoirs of water on top to allow passive cooling in emergencies; I can't think of a larger reservoir than the ocean.
John August 5, 2011 at 8:35 am Reply

A response to Kirk's latest Forbes blog posting ( http://blogs.forbes.com/kirksorensen/2011/08/04/fissile-material-absorption/#comments ) seems to be resorting to ad hominem, and linking to an article critical of thorium -- an article that appears to completely ignore the use of thorium in MSRs/LFTRs.
Kirk Sorensen August 5, 2011 at 9:00 am Reply

Michael, there were several patents written along the lines of the idea you described that I referenced when I wrote a variant of this idea several years ago: http://energyfromthorium.com/2006/06/19/utility-scale-submarine-power-plants/
Alex Sosa August 5, 2011 at 7:22 pm Reply

Kirk, I have been following your articles and videos with great interest. There is an interesting parallel between the people in Oak Ridge who took advantage of the availability of funds to develop a nuclear reactor for planes and used them to advance thorium reactors and those in Oak Ridge today who hope to fund Fast Spectrum Molten Salt Reactor development with monies earmarked for disposal of radioactive waste. Would appreciate if you explain in layman's terms the Fast Spectrum Molten Salt Reactor Options paper.
Chandresh Patel August 21, 2011 at 2:33 pm Reply

Hi Kirk, Big fan of your website and cause.I am a Chemical process engineer (Alberta,Canada)and find thorium technology very convincing. I was very happily surprised to see the LFTR related discussion in main stream media on BNN. Please see the link below. http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip519449 regards.
Roy Harvie August 21, 2011 at 6:51 pm Reply

I wish watch.bnn.ca had feedback, because I want to tell them how ridiculously far off the mark they are. They miss the point about LFTRs vs other thorium reactors, discuss thorium mining like they want to buy stocks (thorium is so plentiful it will never be worth anything), bring up a chart about which countries have the most thorium, but don't say that even the country with the smallest amount has 100,000 year supply and bring up the issue about salts being super corrosive, but don't say that this was solved with Hastelloy-N back in 1970.
Roy Harvie August 21, 2011 at 6:58 pm Reply

Kirk, what's happening with Flibe Energy? Got funding to start building a research reactor? Anything promising? How much $ do you need to raise?