Washington D.C.
http://donlarson.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/washington-d-c/
https://donlarson.wordpress.com/feed
Don Larson’s Business and Tech Corner
Musings on Technology, Business and the World at Large
http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.png

Kirk Sorensen Interview 1370 AM WSPD

Don Larson is Interviewed by Charlie Earl on WSPD 1370 AM

I’m not sure, but I have come to reluctantly embrace some of the things that Alvin Weinberg said many years ago about public “radio-phobia”. These are quotes from his 1994 autobiography:

The actual as opposed to the perceived hazards of wastes therefore depend on the biological effects of protracted exposure to low levels of radiation. This is a matter fraught with controversy. In my view, the effects of exposures that are comparable to the natural background are so small as to be undetectable. The whole issue of low-level insults—not only by radiation, but by various manmade contaminants—belongs to trans-science, not science. That effects so small should terrify the public—indeed might lead to the abandonment of nuclear energy, I can only regard as irrational.

William Clark has likened the public’s frenzy over small environmental insults to the fear of witches in the later Middle Ages. Some million certified “witches” were executed because they could not prove that they had not caused harm to someone or something. In the same way, since one cannot prove that tiny amounts of radiation did not cause a particular leukemia—for that matter one cannot prove that they caused it either—those who wish to succumb to low-level phobia succumb. As a result nuclear energy—as well as other “technologies of abundance” such as pesticides and fertilizers—are under siege. Not until the low-level controversy is resolved can we expect nuclear energy to be fully accepted.

–pg 181-182

Unless the public overcomes its fear of low levels of radiation, the future of nuclear energy is bleak. I therefore consider the biological effect of low levels of radiation to be the leading scientific issue underlying the nuclear controversy.

–pg 229

In the 1960s, nuclear energy was under heavy attack by people who insisted that low levels of radiation were much more dangerous than we in the nuclear establishment conceded. Scientifically what was at issue was the existence of a threshold for radiation. Below such a threshold radiation was harmless.

–pg 251

James Conca, Forbes: Fear Of Radiation — It’s All In The Noise

Top 10 Attributes

Here is a resource paper/technology summary on the top ten basic attributes/reasons why LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) should be pursued. This is a very easy to use resource to have handy when you are talking to a legislator or talking to a friend, neighbor, or family member. While Thorium’s use in a LFTR has many benefits we feel these top ten are the easiest to convey to someone knowing little about the technology in order to peak their interest.

THORIUM AND LFTR TOP TEN ATTRIBUTES

The abundance of the element thorium throughout the Earth’s crust promises widespread energy independence through Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) technology. A mere 6,600 tonnes of thorium could provide the energy equivalent of the combined global consumption of 5 billion tonnes of coal, 31 billion barrels of oil, 3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 65,000 tonnes of uranium. With LFTR, a handful of thorium can supply an individual’s lifetime energy needs; a grain silo full could power North America for a year; and known thorium reserves could power advanced society for many thousands of years.

LFTR is based on demonstrated technology with sound operational fundamentals proven by 20,000 hours of reactor operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late 1960′s. Despite recognized, compelling advantages, LFTR development stalled when political and financial capital were concentrated instead on fast-spectrum plutonium breeding reactors.

LFTR operates at low pressure, is chemically and operationally stable, and passively shuts down without human intervention. Low pressures eliminate the need for massive and costly pressure containment vessels and alleviate safety concerns about high-pressure releases to the atmosphere. LFTR offers significant gains in safety, cost and efficiency with greatly reduced environmental impact relative to existing light-water reactors (LWRs).

LFTR is more efficient, using 99% of the thorium-derived fuel and extracting significantly more energy from abundant, inexpensive thorium than other reactors can from more scarce and costly uranium. LWRs burn scarce fissile reserves as a one-time consumable; LFTR consumes fertile thorium, using fissile reserves only to start the thorium fuel-cycle.

LFTR can use a range of nuclear starter fuels and can consume plutonium and other actinides from legacy spent nuclear fuel stockpiles. Molten salt reactors were started on all three fuel options and once operational, LFTR can continue operation with just thorium.

LFTR produces safe, sustainable, carbon-free electricity and a range of radioisotopes useful for medical imaging, cancer therapy, industrial applications and space exploration. LFTR waste heat can be used to desalinate sea water and high primary heat can drive ammonia production for agriculture and fuels or synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Most LFTR byproducts stabilize within a decade and have commercial value; the minor remainder has a half-life of less than 30 years, stabilizing within hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years. LFTR waste is primarily fission products and does not include unspent fuel, fuel cladding, or long-lived transuranics typical of legacy spent nuclear fuel.

LFTRs can be mass-produced in a factory and delivered and reclaimed from utility sites as modular units. Modular LFTR production offers reduced capital costs and shorter build times. Modular installation near the point of need also eliminates long transmission lines. Higher temperatures and turbine efficiencies enable air-cooling away from water bodies.

LFTR and thorium are proliferation resistant. Thorium and its derivative fuel, uranium-233, are impractical and undesirable for weaponization efforts relative to well-known uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding pathways. Thus, despite 60 years of thorium research, none of the world’s tens-of-thousands of warheads are based on the thorium fuel-cycle.

Liquid salt fuels cannot fail or meltdown. The liquid salt fuels have a thousand-degree liquid range, eliminating the possibility of fuel failure scenarios from overheating or meltdown like at Fukushima. The liquid fuel form is a key differentiator from conventional solid-fueled LWRs with LFTR’s liquid salts serving as both a fuel carrier and coolant. The salts are not reactive with water or the atmosphere like some existing fuels and coolants. Fuel can be added to the salts and byproducts removed while the reactor remains online.

Learn more at www.energyfromthorium.com

Energy and The Economy

http://donlarson.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/energy-and-the-economy/

https://donlarson.wordpress.com/feed

Don Larson’s Business and Tech Corner
Musings on Technology, Business and the World at Large

http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.png

David Amerine has 45 years of experience in the nuclear industry. He began his career in the U.S. Navy, after graduating from the United States Naval Academy and obtained a Masters in Management Science from the Naval Post Graduate School while in the Navy.  After leaving the Navy, he joined Westinghouse at the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site.  There he worked as a shift operations manager and then as the refueling manager for the initial core load of the Fast Flux Test Facility, the nation’s prototype breeder reactor.  Mr. Amerine furthered his career in the commercial nuclear power industry throughout the 1980’s, first as the Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS) vendor, Combustion Engineering, Site Manager at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station during startup of that three-reactor plant and then as Assistant Vice President Nuclear at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station. There he led special, interdisciplinary task forces for complex problem resolutions involving engineering and operations during recovery period at that facility back in the late 1980’s.

Davis-Besse was the first of eight nuclear plants where he was part of the leadership team or the leader brought in to restore stakeholder confidence in management and/or operations. In the DOE Nuclear Complex these endeavor recoveries included the Replacement Tritium Facility, the Defense Waste Processing Facility, and the Salt Waste Processing Facility projects. In addition to Davis-Besse in the commercial nuclear industry, in 1997 he was brought in as the Vice President of Engineering and Services at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station where he was instrumental in leading recovery actions following the facility being shut down by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  His responsibilities included establishing robust Safety Conscious Work Environments (SCWE) programs.

In 2000, Mr. Amerine assumed the role of Executive Vice President of Washington Government, a $2.5 billion business unit of Washington Group International (WGI). In this role, Mr. Amerine was responsible for integrated safety management, conduct of operations, startup test programs, and synergies between the diverse operating companies and divisions that made up WGI Government. Mr. Amerine was then selected as the Executive Vice President and Deputy General Manager, CH2M Hill Nuclear Business Group, where he supported the President in managing day-to-day operation of the group, which included six major DOE sites, three site offices, and numerous individual contracts in the international nuclear industry.  He was charged with improving conduct of operations and project management, expenditures and staffing oversight, goal setting, performance monitoring, and special initiatives leadership.

Mr. Amerine came to B&W in 2009 where he was subsequently selected as President of Nuclear Fuel Services in early 2010 after the NRC had shut down that facility which is vital to the security of the United States since it is the sole producer of fuel for our nuclear Navy.  He led the restoration of confidence of the various stakeholders including the NRC and Naval Reactors.  The plant was restored to full operation under Mr. Amerine’s leadership.  He retired from NFS in 2011.

Jiang Mianheng gave the lead-off presentation at the International Thorium Energy Organization 2012 meeting in Shanghai, sponsored by the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear and Applied Physics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Jiang Mianheng is the son of former president Jiang Zemin and a leader of CAS. After publication of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors in the July/August 2010 American Scientist he led a delegation to Oak Ridge National Laboratory to learn more about the ORNL molten salt reactors experience. In January 2011 the CAS announced a $350 million 5 year thorium MSR project engaging 400 people.

Videographer Gordon McDowell provided this initial draft of Jiang’s presentation. Jiang explains China’s GDP growth, urbanization, and increasing energy demand and concern about environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels. He presents the potential for using LFTR to solve these problems. You might spot some graphics from the American Scientist article and the Aim High presentation.

After his presentation I presented him a copy of THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal, which he insisted that I autograph.