I hope you enjoy the interview, which you can download in a variety of different audio files or read the transcript (but I think the audio versions are better).

Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense: “Kirk Sorensen on Thorium–The Magic Elixir That Could Solve Our Energy Needs and Global Warming”

To that end, eight sites were identified around England and Wales that would be permitted to host new nuclear plants. Each of these sites has or has had a nuclear reactor there previously. Several consortia of utilities and vendors formed to develop new reactors at each of these sites, and one of them, Horizon Nuclear Power, was a joint venture of the German utility E.ON and RWE npower, a UK-based electricity and gas supply generation company.

Horizon had planned to build new reactors at the Wylfa and Oldbury sites in the UK, but today they announced that they would not, citing the global economic crisis and the financial after-effects of Germany’s plan to phase out nuclear power.

Last fall, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) announced that they were pulling out of the NuGeneration consortium, which has planned to build new reactors at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. The NuGeneration consortium still plans to continue without SSE.

BBC: Is the UK’s nuclear future in jeopardy?

Power Engineering: New nuclear power plants in UK cancelled

Motherboard TV: Doctor Teller’s Strange Loves, from the Hydrogen Bomb to Thorium Energy

Ralph Moir had told me this story about Teller before, but watching it presented this way with the video interviews of Teller and short descriptions of projects that we worked on, was much richer. Teller was indeed a very unique kind of person, whose early experiences with Communism in Hungary shocked his mind into responses that others struggled to understand. I hesitate to cast any judgements since I certainly did not go through what Teller went through, but I have noticed that among Hungarian emigres to the US of a particular age (and I have met several) there is an intensity of personality that I have come to believe must be a product of this environment.

In posting this, I went back to reference an earlier post I had made for Alex’s previous effort, “The Thorium Dream”, and discovered to my horror that I had never posted it on the blog! So in attempting to rectify for that past oversight, here is his enjoyable short documentary on the growing effort to bring an understanding of thorium and the molten-salt reactor to the world.

Motherboard TV: The Thorium Dream

Finally, Moir references the paper that he and Teller co-wrote, which was Teller’s final paper. For those of you who would like to read it, here it is in PDF form:

Thorium-Fueled Underground Power Plant Based on Molten Salt Technology, by Ralph Moir and Edward Teller, 2004

Safer, cleaner nuclear alternative tops the agenda for new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy

World’s first coalition of cross-party legislators formed to examine thorium-fuelled nuclear power

Westminster, London – 01 March 2012 – The Weinberg Foundation, a not-for-profit advocacy group for thorium energy, announces the formation of a new All-Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Thorium Energy, which held a lively inaugural meeting in parliament yesterday.

Attracting cross-party support from MPs and Peers, the forum will generate critical debate on the potential of thorium as a viable new energy source and examine reactor technology and new fuel designs in planning for the adoption of a viable cleaner, safer and abundant global energy solution. As 10,000 times the energy density of coal, thorium is a convincing nuclear fuel option to tackle fossil-fuel reliance.

Labour Peer Baroness Worthington, who is the patron of the Weinberg Foundation and Chair of the APPG, comments:

“Whilst public opinion is moving towards the acceptance of nuclear power to combat environmentally damaging fossil-fuelled energy sources, Fukushima clearly demonstrated the dangers of traditional solid-fuel uranium reactor designs. If there is a safer ‘green nuclear’ alternative, which also effectively tackles waste, proliferation and energy security, we have a responsibility to future generations to examine it.”

Vice-Chair of the group Dr Julian Huppert MP said:

“As a scientist I am delighted to help establish this platform for evidence based discussion and debate on this most important issue. Nuclear power has always had great potential and the UK was once a world leader in nuclear science research. We intend to explore whether energy from thorium can make a significant contribution to delivering a low carbon economy and help to reinstate the UK’s leadership position.”

The Department for Energy and Climate Change in its recent response to a highly critical House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report into nuclear R&D recently announced its intention to consult on a long term strategy for nuclear power in the UK.

Many of the APPG members have backgrounds in science, climate policy and the energy industry and are well placed to examine the need for the UK to take a considered position on Thorium. Energy-hungry nations like China, Japan, India and others currently look to be leading the march on exploiting the benefits offered by Thorium-fuelled reactors.

The Weinberg Foundation is providing the secretariat to support the APPG.
End.

Notes to the Editor
The list of founding members of the APPG is as follows:

Officers
Chair: Baroness Worthington (Lab)
Vice-Chair: Dr Julian Huppert MP (Lib Dem)
Treasurer: Lord Lucas of Crudwell (Con)

Members
Lord Clark of Windermere
Mike Crockart MP, Lib Dem
Tony Cunningham MP, Labour
Lord Deben, Conservative
Barry Gardiner MP, Labour
Lord Grantchester, Labour
Viscount Stephen Hanworth, Labour
John Hemming, Lib Dem
Lord Jay, Cross bench
The Rt Reverend Bishop of Hereford, Antony Priddis
Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, Labour
Lord Oxburgh, Cross bench
Lord Stoddart, Independent Labour
Lord Taverne, Lib Dem
Lord Teverson, Lib Dem
James Wharton MP, Conservative
Heather Wheeler MP, Conservative
Lord Whitty, Labour
Simon Wright MP, Lib Dem
Tim Yeo MP, Conservative

For further information contact:
Sophia Henri
Communications, Weinberg Foundation
Secretariat to the APPG on Thorium Energy
Tel: +44 (0) 7793 555403
Email: Sophia.henri@the-weinberg-foundation.org
www.the-weinberg-foundation.org

David Martin
APPG co-ordinator
davidmj@parliament.uk
Tel: 07903 434399
david.martin@the-weinberg-foundation.org

Yesterday the oldest nuclear power plant in the UK (Oldbury) permanently closed. Perhaps today the door is opening on a bright new thorium-powered future!

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

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

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

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.