Now Joe is working on a very large and excited technology development program and his understandings of tech development have grown immensely. Joe also did one of the very first “Tech-Talks” at Google on the subject of LFTR technology. I still remember how excited he was after he gave the talk and he called me and said “you’ve got to get out here!”

Many thanks to Gordon McDowell for editing this video!

So last Friday, December 16, I gave this presentation on the Google campus:

I greatly appreciate Iain McClatchie for shooting the video and Gordon McDowell for the editing.

Why didn’t it happen?

Short answer–because all of the political, technological, and financial focus was on the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor. Later on, due to fears about non-proliferation, the US cancelled plans to commercially reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium, and the case for the fast breeder reactor was toast. Because there were no fast breeder reactors to take all the plutonium that had been generated from light-water reactors, in 1982 the US government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and started collecting a tax that would be intended to pay for what would eventually become Yucca Mountain.

Le LFTR (Réacteur à Fluorure Liquide de Thorium) a le potentiel pour rendre l’énergie électrique moins chère que celle basée sur le charbon. Les coûts typiques de l’énergie électrique – produite à partir du charbon, hydroélectricité et sources de gaz naturel – achetée par les services publics aux US sont en moyenne autour de 5-6 centimes (ndr: de $) par kilowatt-heure. Les règlements gouvernementaux exigent aux services publics d’acheter l’énergie produite par le solaire et l’éolienne à 20-30 centimes/kWh. Le coût potentiel de 3 centimes/KWh offert par le LFTR est la motivation économique por cesser de brûler du charbon émettant du CO2, sans les taxes économiquement préjudiciables sur le carbon et sans des tarifs d’achat politiquement obscurcies. De cette façon l’LFTR peut _améliorer à la fois l’environnement et l’économie.

Il y a un moyen supplémentaire pour bénéficier de la puissance à bas prix du LFTR – synthétiser des combustibles liquides pour remplacer le pétrole. Le monde dérive 37% de son énergie à partir du pétrole, contre 21% à partir du charbon. Une centrale nucléaire typique génère environ 1 GW (1000 MW) de puissance électrique. Une grande raffinerie produit 40 GW de puissance sous la forme d’essence, du diesel et du carburéacteur.

Les carburants pétroliers liquides contribuent au réchauffement climatique mais ils sont essentiels à l’économie mondiale. Leur haute densité énergétique et portabilité les rend des sources d’énergie attrayantes pour les véhicules comme les voitures, camions, trains, bateaux et avions, qui portent son source d’énergie avec soi.

Nous pouvons utiliser plus de puissance d’origine LFTR pour plus de trains à grande vitesse et pour plus de petites automobiles à courte portée; nous pouvons utiliser des centrales LFTR pour propulser des grands navires océaniques. Mais nous ne pouvons électrifier des avions commerciaux et camions parce qu’ils ne peuvent pas porter des lourdes, encombrantes batteries avec eux.

L’élevée densité énergetique du pétrole et un siècle d’expérience en ingénierie dans son utilisation l’ont rendu essentiel pour l’économie américaine; notre soif de celui-ci s’élève à 260 milliards de gallons (ndr: 1 gallon = 3,8 litres) par an. Notre présence protectrice dans le golfe Persique est estimée avoir coûté plus de 7 mille milliards de $.

L’Hydrogène a été présenté comme le combustible idéal, brûlant proprement et émettant seulement de la vapeur d’eau dans l’atmosphère après combustion. L’hydrogène peut être efficacement produit par dissociation catalytique ou par électrolyse à haute température, ce qui est possible avec des technologies avancées d’énergie nucléaire comme le réacteur à haute température refroidi à gaz (NGNP) favorisée par l’Idaho National Labs, ou le LFTR avec refroidissement à sel fondu.

L’efficacité de la conversion de l’énergie thermique en énergie chimique potentielle peut approcher le 50% avec le cycle du soufre-iode si la température du sel fondu est de 900 C; un cycle cuivre-chlore un peu moins efficace peut être utilisé à des températures inférieures compatibles avec les matériaux nucléaires courants.

Néanmoins, l’hydrogène est un carburant impraticable pour un véhicule. Pour le contenir il faut soit une couteuse réfrigération à -423 F ou une coûteuse compression à 5000 psi. Les petites molécules de H2 fuivent, et peuvent fragiliser les métaux.

L’azote et le carbone peuvent être des transports efficaces de l’énergie potentielle chimique de l’hydrogène. Les formes liquides de ces combustibles peuvent être facilement contenues dans des réservoirs à des températures et pressions standards modestes. La densité énergétique de ces combustibles liquides est supérieure à celle de l’hydrogène, ce qui permet de réservoirs plus petits.

Le méthanol, favorisé par le prix Nobel George Olah, est un substitut raisonnable de l’essence; le diméthyl éther peut se substituer à du carburant diesel. Les deux nécessitent des sources de carbone, peut-être de nouvelles installations de captage du carbone dans les usines de charbon. Ce carbone sera finalement libéré dans l’atmosphère lorsque le combustible est brûlé; nous l’avons empruntée en sortant de l’usine de charbon.

Mais qu’advient-il si nous cessons la combustion du charbon? Le projet “Liberté Verte” (“Green Freedom”, Los Alamos Lab) propose de capter le CO2 de l’air, mais sa densité n’est que de 0,035% de l’air. Par contre, l’azote est abondant dans l’atmosphère (78%) et le retourner à l’air est non polluante. Considérons donc l’ammoniac comme combustible. L’ammoniac est le deuxième produit chimique industrielle le plus commun.

Ammoniac

L’ammoniac est utilisé pour faire des engrais et même directement dans l’agriculture, par l’injection d’ammoniac liquide directement sous le sol. Les engrais de l’ammoniac sont responsables de l’amélioration de la production agricole qui alimente les deux tiers de la population mondiale. Plus que 1% de l’énergie primaire est utilisée pour produire de l’ammoniac.

Ammonia Fertilizer

L’ammoniac est un produit chimique industriel si commun qu’il est distribué par des canalizations dans les États agricoles. Il est transporté et contenu dans des réservoirs sous une pression modeste, similaire à celle du propane.

Il est potentiellement dangereux à inhaler; une concentration de 1% inhalé pendant 1 heure a un risque de mortalité de 1%. Cependant l’ammoniac est facilement détecté par son odeur, et étant plus léger que l’air il se dilue rapidement dans un déversement. Contrairement à l’essence ou le carburant diesel, il ne prend pas feu en cas d’accident; la température d’inflammation est de 650 C. Considérant tous ces risques, le danger de l’ammoniac pour la santé est environ le même que celui de l’essence.

Le combustible Ammoniac

L’ammoniac a été le combustible pour l’avion X-15 qui a établi (dans les années ‘60) des records de vitesse. L’Université du Michigan a un camion alimenté à l’ammoniac. En Belgique pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale du combustible à ammoniac alimenté les autobus.

Aujourd’hui des moteurs polycarburant (“flex-fuel”) à combustion interne sont capables de fonctionner avec une variété de combustibles, allant de l’essence à l’E85 (éthanol 85%, 15% d’essence). Il semblerait que les moteurs flex-fuel peuvent être adapté pour fonctionner avec un mélange miscible d’ammoniac et une petite quantité de diméthyl éther ou de l’ammoniaque mélangé avec de l’ammoniac réformé (NH3 -> 3 / 2 H2 + N2) dans le chemin vers le moteur.

Les piles à combustible sont une alternative aux moteurs à combustion interne. Dans les piles à hydrogène, l’hydrogène est combiné avec l’oxygène dans l’air pour produire électricité pour les batteries de véhicules et de moteurs.

La pile à combustible directe d’ammoniac utilise l’ammoniac directement, en enlevant l’hydrogène de l’ammoniac sur la surface chaude d’un électrolyte céramique.

Production d’Ammoniac

Le processus inverse peut fabriquer l’ammoniac à partir des flux d’azote séparée de l’air et d’hydrogène créé par dissociation, alimenté par la chaleur industrielle à haute température et par énergie électrique fourni par les générateurs LFTR.

L’étape de l’électrolyse ou de dissociation thermique de l’hydrogéne peut être éliminé via la synthèse d’ammoniac à semi-conducteurs, fonctionnant comme une pile à combustible à oxyde solid, mais en sens inverse. Il a de même une membrane conductrice à céramique protonante. Il a l’avantage qu’il n’y ait jamais aucun gaz d’hydrogène explosif séparé et il fonctionne à basse pression. L’azote est obtenu à partir de l’ASU (unité de séparation d’air). L’eau approvisionne l’hydrogène. Les membranes céramiques sont des tubes et le SSAS peut être étendu en utilisant plusieurs tubes.

Le processus SSAS est plus sûr et moins cher que la norme du processus Haber-Bosch. L’avantage essentiel pour le coût est que le SSAS est projeté de produire ammoniac à 6800 kWh par tonne. Avec une production industriel, la puissance électrique du LFTR devrait coûter 0.03/kWh $, entraînant des coûts de l’ammoniac d’environ 200 $ la tonne. Ce prix est la moitié du coût de l’ammoniac produite aujourd’hui à partir de gaz naturel, et on évite le dégagement de dioxyde de carbone dans ce processus de fabrication si répandu.

La chaleur de combustion est l’énergie thermique qui serait libérée dans un moteur à combustion interne. Tenant compte des prix différents et des chaleurs de combustion de l’ammoniac et de l’essence illustre le fait que l’énergie de l’ammoniac est un tiers du coût de l’énergie de l’essence.

Coût du combustible ammoniac

Comment ce coût énergétique inférieur pourrait se traduire dans les coûts de carburant des véhicules? Le diagramme à barres ci-dessous illustre (à gauche) les composantes typiques du coût de l’essence en Californie. La plupart du coût est pour le pétrole brut qui fournit le contenu énergétique de l’essence. Les coûts de raffinage ne sont que 10% environ, même si les raffineries sont des investissements complexes et coûteux.

Nous ne savons pas vraiment le coût d’usines chimiques SSAS, mais simplement supposez que les ingénieurs chimistes de talent qui ont construit les raffineries de pétrole peuvent construire pareillement des grandes usines de production d’ammoniac à peu près au même coût.

En résumé, le l’ammoniac comme combustible liquide peut remplacer les combustibles liquides dérivés du pétrole pour les véhicules de transport de surface, à un moindre coût, et en éliminant les émissions de CO2.

Cet article est issu d’une presentation par Robert Hargraves, Darryl Siemer, and Kirk Sorensen, Ammoniac Nucléaire: Killer App du Thorium, présenté le 11 Octobre 2011, à la réunion annuelle iTheo au City College de New York.

Dr. Ritsuo Yoshioka of the International Thorium Molten-Salt Forum has relayed some sad news to us:

“This is a very sad notice. Professor Kazuo Furukawa passed away on December 14th 2011. He had a cancer surgery in last summer, and he once came back. In last October, he gave several lectures at different seminars, and gave lectures on the Internet TVs, very actively. He was in a hospital since last November in order to relax his body, but it is a time we have to say the final words. I and other staffs will keep promoting his will, that is to realize Thorium MSR on this world. We hope your cooperation to this Forum, same as before.”

I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Furukawa at the first Thorium Energy Conference (ThEC2010) in London, England in October 2010. Dr. Furukawa was very friendly to all but forceful in his conviction that only the molten-salt reactor had the potential to usefully realize the titanic energies of thorium.

The conference featured speakers from other thorium-related reactor topics, including solid-fueled thorium reactors and accelerator-driven thorium reactors. Without fail, at the conclusion of any talk on a thorium reactor type other than an MSR, Dr. Furukawa would raise his had for the first question, and in his broken English spoken with great earnestness, would try to convey his intense convictions in the superlative merit of the molten-salt reactor.

This was a man who wasn’t going to waste any time.

Shortly after the London conference, Dr. Furukawa and Senator Keishiro Fukushima traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee and I drove up there and served as a bit of a host for them. We visited several locations and I enjoyed having some time to talk with Dr. Furukawa.

He shared several stories with me that stay with me–one might even say that they haunt me.

The first was his description of being a young sickly man on the island of Honshu in August 1945. He had been called into military service to repel the anticipated American invasion of the Japanese home islands. He knew he would die soon in the invasion. He told me that when he heard that the bombs had gone off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki he realized that the Japanese would surrender, and for the first time in many years, he believed that he would live and have a future.

He told me that he committed his life to improving the lives of all humanity because of his elation that his life would continue. I had heard stories of American soldiers who believed that they would certainly be killed in a Japanese invasion, but this was the first time I ever heard the same story but told from a Japanese perspective.

He also shared a copy of a talk given by Alvin Weinberg called “The Protohistory of the Molten-Salt Reactor”. This talk contained some very valuable insights into the beginnings of fluoride reactor research in the US, but then Furukawa made a casual, almost off-hand remark:

“Alvin would never talk about the MSR in the United States the way he would talk about it with us when he was abroad.”

I realized that Weinberg was truly scared by the American nuclear community and what they had done and still could do to him and his colleagues because of their defense of the MSR concept. And Furukawa confirmed that Weinberg was a great advocate of the concept when he was “out of the watchful ears” of the American nuclear community.

Farewell, Dr. Furukawa, and thank you for all that you did for us.

CO2 emissions from burning liquid carbonaceous fuels continue to rise, exceeding even those from burning coal. Aside from the fact that CO2 emissions may cause a global warming catastrophe, and aside from the fact that the world is running out of economically recoverable oil, the US has an energy security problem.

The US produces just 35% of the 260 billion gallons used annually. We pay $400 billion per year for imported oil. The US spent $7 trillion through 2007 to maintain a US presence in the Persian Gulf.

We can and should reduce our use of liquid fuels derived from fossil petroleum, and we know we will always need some carbonaceous gasoline, diesel, and JP8 fuels. Yet there may be carbon neutral methods to recover or offset the CO2 released into the atmosphere by burning them.

Using nuclear heat and power, chemical engineers can design plants to synthesize CHx fuels from any carbon source. One source might be agriculture to harvest carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is a different objective than growing corn to harvest its kernels’ sugar to be fermented into ethanol. This objective is to obtain the carbon from all the plant matter, not the potential energy from ethanol combustion. The energy source to make such synthetic fuels would really be the nuclear heat and power source.

How much agriculture might be needed? Very roughly, an acre of land can produce 3 dry weight tons of biomass per year. This is approximately the same for corn fields and forests. The mass of the carbon in biomass is about 50%, so the dry weight of carbon extracted from the atmosphere this way is about 1.5 tons per acre. The US has about one billion acres of farmland, capable in total of producing about 1.5 GT (giga tons) of carbonaceous fuels. US annual fuel consumption is about 1 GT per year. So making such fuel this way is barely conceivable, especially if we use less, perhaps substituting ammonia or battery power for most vehicles.

Project Green Freedom is conceived by Jeffrey Martin and William Kubic of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The idea is to use a nuclear power plant to provide the energy to synthesize fuel, and use the air flow of the cooling towers as a source for carbon from CO2 that makes up about 0.035% of the atmosphere. They observed that alkaline lakes absorb about 30 times the CO2 of similar size fields of switchgrass, and so conceived of trays of potassium carbonate exposed to the airflow within the nuclear plant cooling towers. The CO2 would be electrochemically removed from solution, combined with hydrogen from electrolysis of water to manufacture methanol, which is converted to gasoline. There is not yet a demonstration plant and there are some concerns about the efficacy of CO2 absorption and the number of cooling towers required. The whole fuel combustion/synthesis process would be carbon neutral, because just as much CO2 would be put into the atmosphere by burning as removed by Green Freedom.

There may be another way to implement a carbon neutral cycle for carbonaceous liquid fuels. Did you notice the “cement” line on the first illustration in this post?

The lime cycle has been used to make mortar for construction for millennia. Limestone is heated very hot to drive off CO2; it’s not really “burned”. Adding water makes calcium hydroxide used as the binding agent for mortar. Water is then given off and the setting mortar very slowly absorbs CO2 from the air to make a strong calcium carbonate cement. This idealized cycle is carbon neutral, but in the real world the process of heating the limestone is accomplished by burning large quantities of natural gas, which is why this process is the fourth largest contributor to atmospheric CO2 pollution, after natural gas, coal, and petroleum burning. In today’s construction industry, lime mortar is replaced by Portland cement, produced by a similar cycle, but with sand added to the limestone to add silicon to the chemistry, making a stronger cement. The CO2 cycle is the same.

This process is the conception of Darryl Siemer, a retired nuclear chemist from Idaho National Labs. Heat from a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) would be transferred to the kilns to heat the sand and limestone. The molten salt might have a temperature of 800 C, so it just preheats the sand and limestone. The Portland cement process requires 1500 C, so that energy is supplied by a plasma arc powered by electricity from a LFTR. The exhaust gas contains CO2 and H2O, with the CO2 fed to a synfuel plant combining with H2 from electrolysis powered by LFTR. In this example Darryl proposed making 3 quads of carbonaceous fuel — about 8% of today’s US fuel consumption. Making that much fuel creates 300 MT (mega tonnes) of cement. The process would be carbon neutral, because the fuel synthesized and eventually burned would release CO2 into the atmosphere that would be absorbed by cement hardening as it is used in construction.

The US only uses about 106 MT per year of cement, so the rest could be exported. China uses 1800 MT of cement annually — more than half the entire world production.

So here is another source for carbon neutral carbonaceous fuels — nuclear cement.

Petroleum’s high energy density and a century of engineering experience in its use have made it essential to the US economy, and our thirst for it runs to 260 billion gallons per year, of which we import 65% at a cost of $400 billion per year. Our protective presence in the Persian Gulf is estimated to have cost over $7 trillion.

Hydrogen has been touted as the perfect fuel, burning cleanly and emitting only water vapor into the atmosphere after combustion. Hydrogen can be efficiently produced by high-temperature catalytic dissociation or high-temperature electrolysis, possible with advanced nuclear power technologies such as the high-temperature gas cooled reactor (NGNP) favored by Idaho National Labs, or LFTR with molten-salt coolant. The efficiency of conversion from thermal energy to chemical potential energy can approach 50% with the sulfur-iodine cycle if the molten salt temperature is 900 C; a slightly less efficient copper-chlorine cycle can be used at lower temperatures compatible with current nuclear-grade materials.

However hydrogen is an impractical vehicle fuel. To contain it requires either costly refrigeration at -423 F or costly compression to 5000 psi. The small molecules of H2 leak and can embrittle metals.

Nitrogen and carbon can be effective transports of the chemical potential energy of hydrogen. The liquid forms of such fuels can be readily contained in tanks at standard temperatures and modest pressures. These liquid fuel energy densities are superior to those of hydrogen, requiring smaller tanks. Methanol is a reasonable substitute for gasoline, favored by Nobel laureate George Olah; dimethyl ether can substitute for diesel fuel. Both require carbon sources, perhaps from new carbon-capture facilities at new coal plants. That carbon will be eventually released into the atmosphere when the fuel is burned; we borrowed it on the way out of the coal plant.

But what happens if we stop burning coal? Project Green Freedom proposes capturing CO2 from air, but its density is only 0.035% of air. Nitrogen is plentiful in the atmosphere (78%) and returning it to the air is nonpolluting. Consider ammonia for fuel. Ammonia is the second most common industrial chemical.

Ammonia

Ammonia is used to make fertilizers and even directly in farming, injecting liquid ammonia directly under the soil. Fertilizers from ammonia are responsible for enhancing agricultural production that feeds two-thirds of the global population. More than 1% of all primary energy is used to produce ammonia.

Ammonia is such a common industrial chemical that pipelines distribute it in the farm states. It is transported and contained in tanks under modest pressure, similar to propane. It is potentially hazardous to inhale; a 1% concentration inhaled for 1 hour has a 1% fatality risk. However ammonia is readily detected by its odor, and being lighter than air it rapidly dilutes in a spill. Unlike gasoline or diesel fuel, it does not catch fire in an accident; the ignition temperature is 650 C. Considering all such risks, the health hazard of ammonia is about the same as gasoline.

Ammonia fuel

Ammonia has been the fuel for the record setting X-15 airplane. The University of Michigan has an ammonia-fueled truck. In Belgium in World War II ammonia fuel powered buses. Today’s flex-fuel internal combustion engines are able to run on a variety of fuels ranging from gasoline to E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline). Reportedly flex-fuel engines can be adapted to run on a miscible mixture of ammonia and a small amount of dimethyl ether or ammonia mixed with reformed ammonia (NH3 -> 3/2 H2 + N2) on the way to the engine.

Fuel cells are an alternative to internal combustion engines. Hydrogen fuel cells combine with oxygen in air to generate electricity for vehicle batteries and motors. The direct-ammonia fuel cell uses ammonia directly, stripping the hydrogen from the ammonia on the hot surface of a ceramic electrolyte.

Ammonia production

The reverse process can manufacture ammonia from streams of nitrogen separated from air and hydrogen created by dissociation powered by high-temperature process heat and electric power from LFTR electric power generators.

The hydrogen electrolysis or thermal dissociation step can be eliminated via solid-state ammonia synthesis, operating like a solid-oxide fuel cell, but in reverse. It similarly has a ceramic proton conducting membrane. It has the advantage that there is never any separated explosive hydrogen gas and it operates at low pressure. Nitrogen is obtained from the ASU (air separation unit).  Water supplies the hydrogen. The ceramic membranes are tubes and the SSAS can be scaled up by using more tubes. The SSAS process is safer and cheaper than the standard Haber-Bosch process. The key cost advantage is that SSAS is projected to make ammonia at 6800 kWh per ton. With factory reactor production, LFTR electric power is projected to cost $0.03/kWh, leading to ammonia costs of about $200 per ton. This is half the cost of ammonia produced today from natural gas, and it avoids the release of carbon dioxide in that widespread manufacturing process.

The heat of combustion is the thermal energy that would be released in an internal combustion engine. Taking account of the different prices and heats of combustion of ammonia and gasoline illustrates that energy from ammonia is one-third the cost of energy from gasoline.

Ammonia fuel cost

How might this lower energy cost translate into vehicle fuel costs? The left bar chart illustrates the typical cost components of gasoline in California. Most of the cost is for the crude petroleum that provides the energy content of the gasoline. The refining costs are only about 10%, even though refineries are complex, expensive investments. We don’t really know the cost of SSAS chemical plants, but simply assume that the talented chemical engineers who built petroleum refineries can build similarly large ammonia production plants at about the same cost.

In summary, ammonia liquid fuel can replace petroleum liquid fuels for surface transport vehicles, at less cost, eliminating CO2 emissions.

This article is derived from a presentation by Robert Hargraves, Darryl Siemer, and Kirk Sorensen, entitled Nuclear Ammonia: Thorium’s Killer App, presented October 11, 2011, at the iTheo annual meeting at City College of New York.

The Low-Carbon Earth Summit 2011 is being held in Dalian, China this week. I was originally going to attend but in the end was not able, so I am indebted to Dr. Harold Dodds of the University of Tennessee for giving my presentation at LCES-2011 yesterday.

Liquid-Fueled Reactors and a Thorium-Powered Future (2.5 MB PPT)

The presentation is pretty simple and has an attached narration in the notes. I hope you enjoy it and I am very appreciative to Dr. Dodds for presenting it in Dalian.

Gordon states in the comments that he is looking for broadcast opportunities and is licensing this under “CREATIVE COMMONS” which means that there is no commercial restriction. Anyone can broadcast this, and I think that is exactly what Gordon wants.