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The John Loughlin Show – “The Viability of Nuclear Energy” with Kirk Sorensen

The John Loughlin Show | Podcasts on Audible | Audible.com

John J. Loughlin II is a former three-term Republican State Representative and former Republican Whip serving in the Rhode Island House of Representatives before running for US Congress in 2010. He served in a leadership role on the Naval Affairs Committee, and was a member of House Labor, Health Education and Welfare Committee, and House Veteran’s Affairs. He has also worked in television and film for more than 30 years. He is the host of the John Loughlin radio show on WPRO and is a frequent contributor on WJAR-TV (NBC) as a political analyst.

JOHN LOUGHLIN: You’ve heard me say it many times, but anyone who’s talking to you about net zero carbon who is not talking about nuclear power, is not a serious person. They want a 50% net reduction by 2030 and a 100% net zero by 2050, and this cannot be done on solar panels and windmills. Even if you could, it’s not smart to do it this way. There is a power source that is out there that is net zero carbon that nobody wants to talk about. Why? Because they watched Jack Lemmon and Three Mile Island, they watched the docuseries about Chernobyl. So if we want to factor nuclear power into the equation of a net zero future, things have to change. My next guest is a gentleman named Kirk Sorensen, who is the President and Chief Technologist at Flibe Energy. They are working on an interesting concept called the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), which is a different type of reactor than the usual uranium-plutonium reactor you’re accustomed to. So, Kirk, tell us about the technology that you’re working on and how this is different from what people think of when it comes to nuclear energy.

KIRK SORENSEN: Thank you, yes, it’s different in every way. There’s almost no commonality between what we do today and this, other than the fact that they both make electricity. A LFTR is based on a liquid salt from a different fuel, thorium, and has inherent safety and low pressure, higher temperatures, higher efficiency, almost completely perfect utilization of nuclear energy, and no long-term waste. It’s what nuclear energy always should have been. I’d love to tell you I came up with this, but it was mostly invented long before I was born. This technology was developed by a man named Alvin Weinberg and his team at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 50s and 60s, the same man who invented the pressurized water reactor we use in ships and land all the time. He was looking for something better. He knew that in WWII, during the Manhattan Project, thorium was discovered to be the greatest source of energy in the world, by far. There was nothing even close to it. But because it couldn’t be used for weapons, they shelved it.  It wasn’t the priority during the war. After the war, Weinberg wanted make this happen, so he got a team together and managed to get a little bit of money to build a demo reactor. But it was not what the government wanted to fund, so they killed all his research and fired him in the early 70s. I found out about it when I was at NASA from some guys there who had some background at Oak Ridge, and I was just blown away. I had had no idea such a thing existed. For a long time I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I became more and more convinced that this was a more important thing for me to be working on than space. About 12 years ago I started my company, and we’ve been beavering away at it ever since. It’s a tough slog, we get very little support and active opposition from the government, so we keep going thanks to private efforts. I wish things were going a lot faster, and like you said, if we want to be net zero, this is the way to do it. This actually could be the net zero source for the whole planet for tens of thousands of years to come.

JL: How plentiful is the thorium used in the reactors? How plentiful is uranium?

KS: Thorium is three times more common than uranium; about as plentiful as tin in the Earth’s crust. Odds are if you go outside and pick up an average rock, there’s detectable amounts of thorium in it. Every country has enough to be energy independent. However, you could have the biggest pile of thorium in the world, but it won’t make any energy for you. Just like you might start a fire, you have to start the process using a special material that comes from thorium called uranium-233. Weinberg and his team had stockpiled this at Oak Ridge back in the 60s, but after he was canned, they forgot what to do with it and now the government’s trying to destroy it. This is one of the things we’re trying to tell them. Don’t throw away our path to a thorium future, please preserve this material. We have Senator Tuberville in Alabama, former Auburn head coach, spearheading the effort to save this special material, U-233, that’s needed for thorium reactors. We’re doing all we can to move forward on this, but it’s great to have the opportunity here to be on your show, spread the word, and see if we can get people to help.

JL: The LFTRs, are they smaller reactors, or larger facilities like Three Mile Island?

KS: They can be built at any size, but right now, we’re focusing on building small reactors that are specialized for transportation and making military bases grid independent. Someday, we hope to make much bigger reactors.

JL: It amazes me that there aren’t senators lining up at your front door for this.

KS: We’ve had some really good meetings with a lot of senators. It’s a very bipartisan issue, but only a handful have really gotten out and spoken publicly about it.

JL: Well, that’s because of the stigma. There’s a stigma of nuclear power.

KS: People have been taught to be afraid.

JL: I think that once you told people that a LFTR in their community would mean no electric bill for them for ten years, they would start to be much more receptive to the idea.

KS: When I first learned about this at NASA, one of the first things I thought about was how we could power an extraterrestrial community on the moon or Mars safely with this technology. The notion of being safe was a huge appeal to me from the get-go; a meltdown doesn’t even apply to this design. It was so responsive, so versatile, so safe, and so adaptive. I was so impressed by all these features. I kept thinking, how did we miss this as a society? I found that very few people knew about it, and that was a big problem, so I’ve tried to publicize this information, and let people know that this option actually exists. When people say there’s no silver bullet, I want to say, “Wanna bet? Yeah, there is! We can go do it!”

JL: Well, without going into the physics of the production of nuclear power, what is the main operating difference between this and a traditional reactor like you might see at Connecticut Yankee?

KS: Great question. The fundamental difference is that typical reactors have solid fuel under extremely high pressure, and if that coolant loses its pressure, it can cause a meltdown. A LFTR has liquid fuel at no pressure, and because it’s already liquid, there is no concept of a meltdown. It operates at an inherently stable condition. What happened at Fukushima Daiichi was a reaction between the water and the fuel. The liberated hydrogen spread to a chemical explosion. With this, everything’s in chemical equilibrium, and there’s never been a reactor built in chemical equilibrium before. That’s such a remarkable step forward, and again, it was all proven back in the 60s. It’s like the marble at the bottom of the bowl, it doesn’t want to go do or be anywhere else. To give you an idea of the machines we have now, like Connecticut Yankee, they’re operating at a pressure equivalent to being a mile under the ocean. Can you even imagine that? It’s almost incomprehensible to me how we’re supposed to maintain that pressure. They do it, and it’s amazing, but it’s certainly not a state where nothing can go wrong. You can lose that pressure and have a loss of coolant, and that’s what we’re always afraid of with the pressurized reactors.

JL: So your reactor would create steam, hot water, something to turn a wheel that creates electricity?

KS: Actually, we use high pressure carbon dioxide. But that pressure is outside of the reactor entirely. The energy is ported over into this high pressure carbon dioxide, which then turns a turbine, is cooled, pressurized, and recycled. So the CO2 doesn’t float out into the environment, it just flows around in this loop. And with this carbon dioxide turbine machinery, it’s amazing how much smaller it gets. It shrinks the size over steam by almost a factor of 100. It’s staggering. I was actually next to the a big steam turbine at a coal plant yesterday and I was thinking, wow, we could build this so much smaller if we used carbon dioxide gas turbines.

JL: Kirk Sorensen, UT graduate, former NASA alumnus, and President and Chief Technologist at Flibe Energy, thank you for joining us on the John Loughlin show.

KS: Thanks so much, John, I appreciate it.

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11 thoughts on “The John Loughlin Show – “The Viability of Nuclear Energy” with Kirk Sorensen

  1. Ive known Kirk for several years and along with other engineers working in private industry supporting our military i tried to get some of the big US defense companies to invest in this inherently safe compact energy source for the battlefield – instead of lugging oil tankers into combat zones. For political reasons this has been a road in the USA. As a former builder of the Navys nuclear submarine reactors and a senior military engineering officer I know the politics very well. Its a shame our politicians are forcing our best technologists to build and license our future in China. Kirk is a patriot. His company needs our tax payer and voting support far more than the mistaken belief (aka religion) that solar and wind investments are practical.

  2. I’ve known Kirk Sorensen for several years. As a senior engineer in the defense industry I and others tried to get Kirk’s company funding from large defense contractors to bring the LFTR reactor into modern military use on the battlefield and for naval ship propulsion. As a senior Navy engineering officer and private Industry engineer in the manufacture of Navy nuclear power plants I am keenly aware of the politics involved in US govt approving new even far better solutions that upend the status quo. It is a shame that our politicians do not have the technical understanding and foresight to prevent having our best technologies go offshore to places especially China. This has already happened for nuclear enetgy. When a politician shuns even the most simple technical understanding of the master resource (aka energy) we are giving up our freedoms and power -both kinds!

  3. Well said Kirk.
    I attempted to attend a nuclear talk today with our Liberal Party opposition Treasurer The Hon Angus Taylor. I got there after it finished but met him and attended after.
    Please send me your email address so I can scan and send you my Invitation to that address.
    I would hope to get you our Govt funding.
    Australia is just starting to discuss nuclear energy.
    We have ordered nuclear subs from your USA.
    Australia has committed to Net Zero by 2050. And a 43% CO2 reduction by 2030.
    The book that inspired you is in our National Library. I checked about 10 years ago. Please advise the name as I have forgotten it. Our NL is in Canberra ; 1.5 hours from me. Cheers Kirk. From Dave.

    1. There must be a huge fossil fuel lobby in Australia. I suspect that their biggest two industries are coal and iron ore. I was amazed to learn recently that ferric oxide, the essential part of iron ore, was a product of oceanic photosynthesis _*before*_ the oxygen could escape to make the modern atmosphere. Ferrous ions were iron dissolved in the seas, and they got oxidized.
      Now two Fe₂O₃ molecules need three Carbon atoms to release two Iron atoms (2 Fe) and three CO₂ molecules.

  4. Kirk and thorium need better PR. Please relay this message to him and his company that an interview with Jordan Peterson would be useful. In particular, the lack of substantial movement toward thorium is a psycho-social problem and fits with much of his rhetoric on destructive human tendencies.

    1. Really? Jordan Peterson? In the most courteous terms, he would be out of his element in a meeting with Mr. Sorensen. I would be confused if Kirk made that mistake.

      1. I might suggest as courteously as I possible can be that Jordan Peterson is the ideal person to help Kirk publicize his Lithium Fluoride Thorium Reactor ( the LFTR ). Don’t be fooled by the people who think Jordan Peterson is a right-wing big mouth. Jordan is a small town kid who educated himself in the science of psychology and then practiced clinical psychology for thirty years while teaching at two of the best universities in North America. He should be listened to as he has much to tell us about the future. The common denominator between these two people is that they both can see the future where our society shines brightly.

    2. I can’t help but think of 1 guy I know that’s going to mars and could also have the juice to put this on the map and wonder if you reached out to him to support this in as many ways as he has avenues to move this forward

  5. Humanity owes Dr. Sorenson the deepest thank you for finding Dr Weinberg’s research before it was lost to the incinerator, and for educating ordinary people like me about this technology. Your a great teacher. Regrettably, for our civilization to continue we will need to advance to this next level of technology or we will end up on the dump pile of failed societies/species. Fear and ignorance has always been the barrier that stops humanity from advancement, and that is the issue with the MSR. Educating the general public about nuclear science may be the only path to a fossil fuel free tomorrow. The MSR in any form will not happen until the general public understands and trusts it. “Build it and they will beat a path to your door” may not work with the science resistant and ignorant society of today.

  6. I have followed Kirk Sorensen’s work for many years. But the compact Molten salt reactor maybe a more economical approach. Seaborg technology a Dutch company is setting up commercial production in cooperation with a Korean shipbuilder. I believe the financial issues have been resolved.

  7. This is way to go towards net zero and energy independence for all the nations in the world, including Afghanistan. You don’t have beg for oil and make deal with anyone for your energy needs for 10, 000 years or more. Universe alway has a solution to all problems if only we harmonize with its energy or life force and treat each better. There is no competition here unlike the uranium race to produce plutonium so that you could level cities. The fuel thorium and molten salt reactor is win for everyone and not another’s expense. We have educate our youth who are in school and colleges and they are ones with their passion and energy create a new century for every one. If you are obstacle to this new outlook on nuclear energy, move out of the way, and do something else with your life and don’t waste my time.

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