Pre-Adoption E-mails - Cal Burgart & John Karls

[Cal Burgart]

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Nuclear Fusion Article – The 3/3/2014 New Yorker
From: John Karls
Date: Thu, March 6, 2014 4:40 am
To: Cal Burgart
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Dear Cal,

Sorry not to have been able to join you and Attila and Janice for dinner last Sat. And I hope all is well with you, particularly since I haven’t seen you on the ski slopes recently.

However, the reason for this e-mail is to inquire whether you happened to see the article about nuclear fusion in the 3/3/2014 issue of The New Yorker. [A copy of the article follows below for your convenience.]

Coupled with the fact that it has been proposed as a possible topic for Reading Liberally by Ted Gurney who, you may recall, is a retired U/U Biology Professor.

Three questions for you.

First, if Ted’s proposal were selected for Reading Liberally’s April 9th meeting, would you be able to attend as our nuclear-engineering expert like you did for our 10/10/2012 meeting on Thorium Nuclear Reactors and our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi?

Second, do you recognize any of the people mentioned in The New Yorker article as associated with the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN from your student days there while you earned your PhD in nuclear engineering?

Third, what is your take on The New Yorker article?

[It’s an easy read and is only 20 Microsoft-Word pages.]

It strikes me that nuclear fusion has NO ADVANTAGES when compared to Thorium Nuclear Reactors (you may recall our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign in October 2012 to then-DOE Secretary Steven Chu that you helped draft -- it appears in the first section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org).

Moreover, it appears obvious that nuclear fusion has MANY SERIOUS DISADVANTAGES when compared to Thorium Nuclear Reactors.

You may recall that we stated, inter alia, that (1) LFTR’s (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors) require minimal containment chambers because meltdowns are physically impossible since LFTR’s operate near atmospheric pressure, (2) LFTR’s do not require elaborate cooling systems because they operate well below the boiling point of molten salt and can be passively cooled, (3) thorium has such an incredibly-high “burn-up” that there is virtually no long-lived radioactive waste, and (4) thorium is so stable that it is impossible to make a nuclear weapon from thorium which is why the U.S. turned to uranium and plutonium instead of thorium.

In contrast, it is obvious from The New Yorker article that nuclear-fusion reactors suffer from the same problem as uranium-fission reactors = they are both, in essence, trying to control a nuclear/thermonuclear bomb explosion in order to extract energy. In contrast to thorium which, as just mentioned, is incapable of exploding.

[As I’m sure you are aware, virtually all of the world’s nuclear weapons since 1952 have, in fact, been thermonuclear weapons -- aka hydrogen bombs because they use the same hydrogen-fusion principle that is being described in The New Yorker article as under development for commercial energy production.]

But after more than a half-century of effort involving massive costs, the project which is now projected NOT to be completed for another decade, involves magnets weighing A THOUSAND TONS (i.e., 2 MILLION POUNDS) because the thermonuclear material must be suspended in a vacuum because there are no substances on earth capable of containing it!!!

No mention in the article what happens if the electric current powering the magnets fails -- for example whether there is an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

And no mention in the article about how incredibly expensive will be, if the technology ever becomes operational, all of the massive equipment comprising each fusion power plant. And how incredibly expensive will be the power-transmission lines for distributing the electricity.

In contrast to the thorium reactors which need no containment chambers. And can be so small (and cheap) that one is located in every basement, making obsolete the incredible expense of power-transmission lines.

Enough already on my take on the article.

Except to say that it would appear that our group should approve strong rebukes being sent to the Editor of the New Yorker and to U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein who, per the article, is responsible for wasting the U.S. government’s funds on this project.

Thank you in advance for your time in reading the article and responding. And attending our April 9th meeting if you will be available.

Your friend,

John K.

Reading Liberally Editorial Note = Although John's e-mail says that the text of The New Yorker article follows below, it can now be found in the Reference Materials section of this Bulletin Board.


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Nuclear Fusion Article – The 3/3/2014 New Yorker
From: Calvin Burgart
Date: Thu, March 6, 2014 7:39 pm
To: John Karls
Cc: Dick Guldi *
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I was skipping forward though all this impossible stuff... did I miss
how the most massive experiment in scientific history has a prayer of
being scaled down so that we can have one per continent, or maybe a few
with a zillion power transmission lines??

It is crazy that LFTR's, after being demonstrated at ORNL while I was
there, were not funded to anywhere close to the extent fusion has been.
I am hoping that at some point LFTR's will be found to be the answer -
unfortunately, the USA/ORNL who invented them, will buy them from
France, India, China, and ??

Let me know if you see something about scaling the fusion behemoth back
to something that can be built somewhat close to where the electrical
power is delivered.

I hope to be at the April 9th Reading Liberally, but if I have not gotten
additional education I may not contribute much.

Cal
_______________________
* Reading Liberally Editorial Note = Dick Guldi (PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT) had 36 years of experience at Texas Instruments with water fab start-ups, technology transfers and technology development. He is currently CFO of SemiPhotoMet which specializes in “helping semi-conductor water fabs cut costs by being more productive.”

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: One more article on LFTR's
From: Calvin Burgart
Date: Thu, March 6, 2014 8:11 pm
To: Dick Guldi
John Karls
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http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/thorium/

[The article appears immediately below and in the Reference Materials section of this bulletin board.]

***********
Weinberg Fdn Article on Thorium Reactors

Weinberg Foundation
Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA

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What is Thorium?

Thorium is a naturally-occurring mildly-radioactive element named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. When used as a fuel in nuclear reactors, particularly molten salt reactors, it can be used to generate huge amounts of safe, zero-emission energy.

Thorium is one of the most energy-dense elements found in nature: it has been estimated that just 5,000 tonnes of thorium contain enough energy to meet the world’s total energy demand for an entire year. 5,000 tonnes may seem like a lot, but in 2011 the world used over 6 billion tonnes of coal alone.

Thorium is around three-to-four times more abundant than uranium, with particular concentrations in Australia, China, India, Norway and the United States. It is often found alongside deposits of rare earths.

Astonishingly, thorium is currently dumped as waste, rather than being valued as a vital source of clean energy for the 21st Century. The Weinberg Foundation’s mission is to revive interest in this forgotten element and place thorium energy technologies at the centre of the global energy debate.

MOLTEN SALT REACTORS

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), first designed, built and proven by Alvin Weinberg at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have the potential to revolutionise the world energy supply, allowing us to replace our fossil fuel-based energy system with clean, safe and economical nuclear energy.

Whereas the current generation of nuclear reactors use solid fuel rods, MSRs use a liquid fuel. This fundamental difference leads to benefits that other reactors cannot match:

· Efficiency: Solid-fuelled nuclear reactors are to use just 1% of the total energy in the fuel rods before the rods degrade and must be replaced. MSRs are able to use up to 99% of the available energy in the fuel, greatly reducing the amount of high-level waste produced by the reactor and increasing the efficiency of resource-use.

· No more meltdowns: MSRs have built-in features that make meltdowns impossible. In normal operation, the liquid fuel expands as it increases in temperature, thereby slowing the reaction and acting as a natural brake on the reactor’s temperature. All MSR designs include a plug of frozen salt at the bottom of the reactor. Should a major loss of power or other incident occur, the operators can simply drain the reactor fluid into a safe containment tank beneath the ground.

· Inherently safer: Unlike current reactor systems, which have to operate at many atmospheres of pressure, MSRs operate at natural atmospheric pressure. This means that MSRs are inherently safer to operate, as the risk of a pressure leak and resulting explosion is non-existent.

· Mass-producible: MSRs, which are much simpler than current reactors, lend themselves to modular mass production, much like airliners are built today. This would give MSR manufacturers great economies of scale, thereby reducing the cost of the reactor and allowing rapid deployment of MSRs to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure. Small and modular MSRs could be combined on-site to create large-scale power plants.

THORIUM-FUELLED MOLTEN SALT REACTORS

Thorium-fuelled MSRs (Th-MSRs) offer all the advantages of uranium or plutonium-fuelled MSRs with additional benefits that add up to an extraordinary breakthrough in clean energy. Key benefits of Th-MSRs include:

· Ability to ‘burn up’ nuclear waste from other reactors either as the main nuclear fuel in the reactor, or as start-up fuel to trigger the thorium fuel cycle. Th-MSRs would turn global stockpiles of plutonium and enriched uranium from a liability into an asset.

· Greatly-reduced waste: Th-MSRs would produce only 100 grams of plutonium for every tonne of thorium used. 87% of the waste produced would be safe within a decade.

· Proliferation resistance: It is not possible to enrich thorium to make weapons-grade material. The very small amounts of plutonium produced by Th-MSRs, and the great technical difficulty of extracting it, further reduces proliferation risk.

· Production of medical isotopes: Th-MSRs would produce valuable medical isotopes as a by-product, so safeguarding the world’s supply of material for nuclear medicine.

A longer and fully-referenced version of this page is available here (PDF link).


Thorium and MSRs in the media

· Is there a safer future for nuclear? Dr Geoff Parks, Cambridge University, June 2012
· Safer nuclear – let the thorium debate begin, SmartPlanet, May 2012
· New Life for Forgotten Fuel, FT Magazine, September 2011
· The Nuclear Renaissance?, BBC Business Daily, September 2011
· Thor Forges Safer Nuclear Power, The Sunday Times (PDF 1.6 Mb)
· Thorium: the Element that Could Power our Future, Wired.co.uk, September 2011
· Safer nuclear does exist, The Telegraph, August 2011
· Why thorium nuclear power shouldn’t be written off, Bryony Worthington, The Guardian, July 2011
· Uranium is so last century – enter thorium, the green nuke, Wired, December 2009

Learn more

· See our News page for the latest news about thorium, MSRs and the Weinberg Foundation
· Visit our Resources page for links to other thorium associations, books, blogs, key academic articles, multimedia and more
· See our Media page for a selection of YouTube videos and images

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