Month

Thank you to everyone who supported Gordon McDowell’s new thorium video project! Because of your generous and enthusiastic support he was able to get the funding pledges he needed in only 11 days after he first posted on Kickstarter!

Of course, if you still want to pledge, Gordon can always make the video better…

Gordon McDowell has been an indefatigable force in spreading the message of thorium and LFTR worldwide. Now he has a much greater and more ambitious plan, and he needs our help to make it happen. He needs to raise $20K to make a new video, and he’s using “Kickstarter” to do it.

KICKSTARTER: A Documentary project by Gordon McDowell

Here’s how Kickstarter works:

1. You “pledge” an amount. (No money changes hands.)
2. If enough pledges come in in the specified timeframe, then all pledges are collected. (Pledges become donations.)
3. Gord gets a check. (A new thorium documentary is produced.)

So far, nearly two-thirds of the money Gordon needs has been pledged. But he needs more. If 180 people pledged $50 then he would have enough.

Please consider supporting this. I often get emails from people asking “how can I help?” or “I don’t have a lot of money but I’d like to do something…”

I can’t offer equity in Flibe Energy because we are a privately-held company and the SEC says no-no except under certain circumstances. But if you want to help the thorium effort move forward then funding Gordon’s effort is a great thing that you can do. Because the thing we need more than anything else is to get the word out, and video is the BEST way to get a story across to lots of people. I’d love for people to decide they’re going to study “Fluid Fuel Reactors” but let’s be honest, only hard-core nuclear geeks like me do things like that. But lots of people will watch a video. And they’ll learn quickly. And then they might want to read FFR…

I just love Gordon’s appeal for funding in this short video–

Gordon is right–he is a proven resource to getting the thorium message out. He has had a vision that took me a while to see–but the results were magnificent. Just scanning up and down this blog you see the marvelous results of Gordon’s hard work.

Thorium Remix 2011
TEDxYYC: Kirk Sorensen
TEAC3 Flibe, TEAC3 Bonometti, TEAC3 Hargraves
Google TechTalk Dec 2011

I just looked back and realized that I didn’t post a single time in the month of January. For that I apologize–I want you to know that the frequency of posting is not connected to the pace of development in the world of thorium. In fact, it may be just the opposite–the more that is going on the less time there seems to be to make good high-quality postings.

Nevertheless, in an attempt to recapitulate recent developments let me call a few out:

Baroness Worthington discussed thorium in the House of Lords on January 12th as part of a larger discussion on British national energy policy:

Lords debate the government’s green agenda

“I shall end on a discussion of whether the tried and failed technologies that we talk about a lot will deliver, and by that I mean the current generation of nuclear reactors. We often hear the promise that we are going to build eight or even 10 new reactors to replace the ones that are closing. My reading from those whom I speak to in the industry is that there is a great deal of cynicism about this. It is very unlikely that we will see the scale of build that the Government are anticipating because our current reactor designs are simply not attractive. As one executive who had looked at both designs put it to me, “They are both pretty awful and we do not like them”. I think that a nuclear renaissance is possible and indeed desirable, but it will have to be achieved by looking at the full range of new generation nuclear reactors. It will come as no surprise that I shall mention thorium molten-salt reactors, because of all the technologies that I have looked at in relation to climate change this one has huge potential. If we were able to match the amount of money that we are currently spending on nuclear fusion, there is no doubt that we would develop a technology that had massive potential for export. I would like to mention the Lords Science and Technology Select Committee report on nuclear research and development. It is an excellent report and I hope that the Government will respond to it, because we really do need to look again at our spending.”

I particularly like how she juxtaposed the large investments in nuclear fusion, which has never produced a single watt of electrical power with the non-existent investment in fluid-fueled thorium reactors.

While the noble Baroness was defending an advanced nuclear option in the House of Lords, things were changing a great deal for us at Flibe Energy. Kirk Dorius and his family relocated to northern Alabama and I spent several days helping him unpack and get situated into his new home and in our offices at Flibe. But while we were in the middle of unpacking on Saturday the 14th, one of our biggest media exposures of all time was taking place on the TED.com website:

TED.com: Kirk Sorensen: Thorium, an alternative nuclear fuel

George Monbiot is increasingly realizing that so-called “nuclear waste” might have a lot of value, if placed in machines suitably designed to use it:

Monbiot: A Waste of Waste

But others worry about the glut of natural gas and its effects:

CSMonitor: The natural gas glut is reshaping electricity markets

The DOE is announcing financial support for the licensing of small modular reactors:

US DOE launches major funding program for small nuclear reactors

While the Chinese keep visiting Oak Ridge to get more data on MSRs:

Who’s that knocking at ORNL’s front door? Yep, it’s China (again and again)

And finally, in Japan, the mighty nation is laid low yet again, as the shutdown of their nuclear power plants drives them into a trade deficit for the first time in decades.

Reuters: Exporter Japan eyes first trade deficit in 3 decades