What do thorium reactors and girls who can cite the periodic table from memory have in common?

Answer: Kirk Sorensen. Kirk just got back from England where he gave a successful and compelling presentation on liquid fluoride thorium reactors at the Manchester Town Hall.

I should have known right from the moment I walked in the building that this was going to go well. Right inside the main door are two large statues; one of James Prescott Joule, the famous physicist and thermodynamicist, and the other of John Dalton, chemist and pioneer of atomic theory. As I walked by, Joule whispered that I better tell them a bit about thermodynamics, and Dalton reminded me that chemists could build the best reactor of all.

...

I went through the process of converting thorium to energy and showed how a LFTR uses liquid fluoride fuel to carry the uranium and thorium in a two-fluid arrangement designed to follow the natural processes of thorium's conversion to protactinium, uranium, and then to energy. I described the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and how it demonstrated that this was a real and feasible approach to take to extracting the energy from thorium. I described a more modern version--the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor--that would couple the fluoride reactor to a closed-cycle gas turbine and enable the extraction of energy from thorium at an efficiency roughly 300 times greater than we currently get from uranium in existing reactors.

...

This radical improvement in efficiency means that we could supply world energy needs with about 6000 tonnes of thorium rather than the 65,000 tonnes of uranium, 5 billion tonnes of coal, 32 billion barrels of oil, and 3 trillion cubic meters of gas we use today.

Thorium resources are abundant and a single thorium site in Idaho could provide nearly all the world's yearly demand for thorium...

And how did he feel about the event?

It was a great experience!

Be sure to stop by and read the rest of his post and to also find out who he got to meet there. On a lighter note, check out Kirk's two daughters, Zoe (7) and Kaija (4, just turned 5), recite the periodic table from memory. I hope my future kids turn out to be as smart as them!

Life’s Little Ironies

A British wind utility, Ecotricity, and French nuclear company EDF are fighting for the rights to a “green” union jack to use at the 2012 London Olympics – EDF is the “sustainability partner” for the Olympics, so that’s pretty green all the way around. (EDF is the majority stakeholder in British Energy, hence their interest in this.) On the Wind Energy Planning Web site, the news story about the squabble concludes:

EDF have submitted a trademark application for their green union jack - however Ecotricity is retaliating by taking the company to the high court. EDF energy are 85% owned by the French State. They are the worlds third largest producer of nuclear waste.

It’s all a matter of perspective, we guess. We reckon we would support EDF if we had much feeling for the set-to, but let’s be generous – and disinterested – and wish it and Ecotricity equal luck. Either way, we’ll see a lot of green Union Jacks.

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We, of course, have no beef with anyone who believes the Earth began on this day or that – it began for each of us on the day we were born, after all – but there’s still so much irony to unpack in this story, it’s a little daunting:

During the hearing, [Arizona] State Senator Sylvia Allen (R), the vice chairman of the committee, argued in favor of mining by saying that the earth “has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.” “We need to get the uranium here in Arizona, so this state can get the money from it,” argued Allen.

We’re on Senator Allen’s side as far as uranium mining is concerned – she also mentions, correctly, that it isn’t very environmentally impactful – but we find the juxtaposition of uranium and a young Earth very strange.

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Well, okay:

The U.S. would cancel a nuclear energy agreement with the United Arab Emirates if the Middle East nation were to violate any terms of the deal, an Obama administration official said Wednesday.

Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, sought to convince lawmakers that the pact is designed to keep sensitive technology from flowing to Iran or allowing the UAE to develop atomic weapons.

File it under a promise to do what you promise to do and that about gets it. (The U.S.-UAE agreement allows nuclear technologies to flow between the two countries, though in practice, toward the UAE. The Obama administration has signed the treaty and passed it overt to Congress, which can ignore it – meaning the terms will take effect after some days – or reject it. Congress does not need to affirm it.) UAE’s ports have been used as weigh-stations for nefarious Iranian shipments, though that ended some time ago. That’s why this confirmation of the affirmation.

The green Union Jack (Ecotricity’s version). We’re not sure it’s even legal to attempt a green stars-and-stripes for a commercial purpose.

NEI's 2009 Top Industry Practice Awards on Video

Every year NEI surveys our nuclear plant members to judge and rank the best new practices they've implemented that have allowed them to better run and maintain a nuclear plant. Besides issuing the usual press release announcing the winners...

... NEI has produced a series of short videos that examine safety innovations recognized at our recent annual conference with a Top Industry Practice award. The four releases will be posted here, one per week, throughout July. The first video, “High Tech Stress Relief,” recognizes achievements by employees at the Salem power plant in New Jersey and the Fort Calhoun power station in Nebraska.

The four minute video is also on YouTube, enjoy!

The Senate Moves on the Energy Bill

The Senate Environment and Public Works committee took up the energy bill this morning and honed in quickly on nuclear energy – honed in on it so insistently, in fact, that if President Barack Obama really wants bipartisan support for the bill – which squeaked by in the House – speaking out for a more prominent role for nuclear energy might be a way to achieve it. But Republicans, as we’ll see, were not the only ones positively focused on nuclear.

The panel included Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The latter two became a little stranded with only a few questions asked of them, especially Salazar, but these hearings tend to go where they will.

Let’s start with opening statements from the committee members and our old friend, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.):

“Why are we ignoring the cheap energy solution to global warming, which is nuclear energy. If what we're really interested in is reducing carbon, which is the principle greenhouse gas, we could focus first on smokestacks and say let's start building a hundred nuclear power plants. … And then as we did that, we could begin to close dirty coal plants or … have clean coal plants or much cleaner existing plants.

“But,” Alexander continued, “for the next 20 years, if we really want to deal with global warming, we really only have one option and that is to double the number of nuclear power plants we have. There is no other technological way that we to have to have a large amount of reliable, cheap electricity other than nuclear power. So if we're in the business of saying, Yes, we can, if the President would give the same kind of aggressive interest to building 100 new nuclear power plants that he does to building windmills, we could solve global warming in a generation.”

Here’s Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho):

“As we look at the the renewable energy alternative that are discussed, I'm very concerned that one of the most obvious sources of solution is largely untreated in the legislation that we expect to see coming to us and that is nuclear energy. … We cannot ignore what is probably the biggest piece of the answer and that is nuclear power. … We don't seem to see the kind of provision in proposed legislation that will truly help us expedite and move forward on these very significant answers, like nuclear power.”

And in a valuable show of bipartisanship, here’s Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.)

“It's not cheap, it cost billions of dollars to build a new nuclear power plant, but they're pretty good in terms of how much carbon dioxide they put out or how much of any bad things they put out. ... It takes about 4,000 people to build a nuclear power plant and about 5-600 to run a nuclear power plant.”

Carper further said he was pleased by the number of new license applications submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

And Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.):

You put a price on carbon, what you end up doing is sending a very strong signal in the marketplace that carbon dioxide emissions, that these kinds of emissions, are to be reduced in the future and that you move in the direction of technologies [in] which you do not create carbon dioxide – nuclear is one of those. So I hope that when we focus on the idea of having a cap-and-trade system, we focus on the idea that we are encouraging all  [emphasis, Udall] sources – whether it is the renewables (wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal) or whether it’s nuclear power. But we have to be really clear, I think, that our objective here is to do it all, to increase all the sources that are not contributing [to C02 emissions] and I think that’s a very important point as part of all of this. And I hope those of you that are here today on this panel will cover that side of it.

An important point.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) also gave thumbs up on nuclear, though in passing. Only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) offered criticism, notably about storing used nuclear fuel.

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Lisa Jackson and Steven Chu responded to these comments, Chu with exceptional enthusiasm. While Jackson acknowledged a role for nuclear energy, she listed those who supported the legislation, finishing with, “Electric utilities support it because they know it will expand our use of reliable domestic sources of energy like wind, solar, geothermal and yes, safer nuclear power and yes, cleaner coal.” That feels a little grudging.

No grudge from Chu, though.

“Restarting the nuclear power industry is very important in our overall plan to reduce carbon emissions in this country. From me, you are not going to get any reluctance. As you may know, I think that nuclear power is going to be a very important factor to getting us to a low carbon future.”

“The Department of Energy is doing with its tools everything it can to restart the American nuclear industry. With the loan guarantees, we are pushing as hard as we can on that. We are going to be investing in the future in bettering the technologies and quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead in industrial nuclear power. We've lost that lead as we've lost the lead in many areas of energy technology and we need to get it back.”

A very good showing for nuclear in the Senate and growing evidence that support for it is crossing the aisle.

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One thing we have to note is that Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is an entertaining committee chairman. You’d value this if you sat through a few of these; they tend to the dry. Boxer isn’t putting on a show, she’s just sharp and engaged and keeps thing rolling along in good humor. Appreciated.

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All the quotes come from my transcriptions. See here for the full hearing.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)

Tom Perriello Adds Nuclear to the Mix

We’ve been accused of not noting nuclear-favoring Democrats lately and that’s fair enough. We take them as they come, and it’s certainly true that Republicans find nuclear a good fit with their virtually all-inclusive energy approach. Thus, they say more about it.

Many Democrats, by contrast, seem a bit stuck between old guard environmentalists – although a fair few of them are coming around -and a desire to see renewable energy sources take off, giving viable mature industries short shrift. But we think more Democrats than not support nuclear energy and if they would work it into their messaging more, we’d be more than happy to spotlight them.

So meet Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.). Coming from the same area as Mecklenburg, which we spotlighted last week, Perriello has an editorial in the Appomattox News is which he aims to clarify his energy policies. He mentions some of the companies from last week’s story:

We are already seeing companies like Mod-u-Kraf homes become a national leader in energy efficient homes. Windy Oaks and Red Birch Energy are leading the way on bio-refineries. Several companies are leading the way on advanced battery manufacturing so that all those new hybrid batteries can be made right here in the USA.

Ah, Red Birch, our old friend. Here’s where Perriello mentions nuclear:

The clean energy economy can be the next growth industry, creating millions of new jobs. Some of the biggest winners should be agricultural areas that can produce biofuels, and areas like Region 2000 that are connected to the nuclear industry, as well as former manufacturing hubs that can support the new advanced manufacturing of efficiency technology.

Well, all right, coming from a farming district, Perriello is going to be most excited about bio-fuels. We get that. Region 2000 is an economic development initiative that covers the counties ringing Lynchburg; AREVA is part of its Technology Council. So the reference to nuclear is a trifle mediated. But it’s there and Perriello adopts a general attitude that shows a willingness to change with the times. For example, whither king tobacco?

To really meet the nation’s need for energy independence, we need to tap all of the energy sources that exist in the region. Bio-refineries and bio-power plants can be strategically located throughout the region using feedstocks grown by local farmers, many of whom are looking for a crop to replace tobacco as a sustainable source of income.

Whither? Wither – in favor of bio-fuel.

We liked Perriello’s article for the way it directly answers to his constituents. That can be underestimated, but it’s important, and adding nuclear into the mix is even better. Perriello has gotten hit by the Republicans for supporting the climate change bill – see here for more – but his energy outlook should, if anything, be appealing to them.

You wouldn’t know it from this picture, but Perriello has an exceptionally winning smile – the utility of which for a politician should not be underestimated – but here looks as though he’s on the way to his dentist.

Fair and Unfair Assessments

Seed Magazine has an interesting set of articles that roost under the title: The Lesser Evil: Nuclear or Coal? Well, you have to give a magazine room to gin up its content. Gwyneth Cravens, author of the Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, offers an entry:

Wind and solar are too diffuse and intermittent to provide baseload, and they require backup, mainly from fossil fuels. Nuclear has about the same carbon footprint as wind but is astronomically more compact and efficient and operates at 90 percent capacity (coal: 53 percent capacity; wind: 34 percent). Nuclear waste is therefore tiny in volume. The world’s entire annual inventory could fit in one large townhouse. Nuclear waste recycling, done abroad, drastically reduces volume, radioactivity, and the need for long-term disposal. Civilian nuclear plants have never produced atomic bombs.

That doesn’t sound like a lesser evil, that sounds like a good. We admit that, just as Cravens can make us purr like kittens because she says nice and true things about nuclear energy, so can others put us in a hissy-spitty mood. This is not entirely fair on our part. For example, from a certain perspective, there’s nothing particularly wrong with Benjamin Sovacool’s piece – he’s an American working at the University of Singapore – but we think his argument is a recipe for not doing anything very effective.

There is no devil’s choice between nuclear power plants and coal-fired facilities because both are Faustian bargains. A broad assortment of other options, ranging from energy efficiency to renewable resources such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, can more effectively respond to the energy challenges facing the United States. By far the cheapest, cleanest, and quickest strategy to meet America’s growing demand for electricity is energy efficiency and demand-side management.

We like energy efficiency fine, but to make it work as a primary method requires a series of mandates that could rapidly become oppressive. In conjunction with a rich source of baseload electricity like, oh say, nuclear, energy efficiency is more easily promoted as a social good than an enforcement procedure. But see - that’s just us. Sovacool’s piece seems more idealistic than practical, what with throwing nuclear and coal overboard, but that’s actually an appealing stance, just not a promise of a very appealing outcome.

Also contributing: K.J. Reddy from the University of Wyoming (pro clean coal). Victor Rudolph from the University of Queensland (also pro clean coal); and Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program (three guesses). Have a gander.

Gwyneth Cravens. Should you ever have a professional portrait done, this would be a pretty ideal approach, even if you look like Ingmar Bergman’s about to put you through an emotional wringer.

Seattle and The Potential of Gasified Coal

Seattle? Nuclear energy? We think of Seattle – and Washington state -as hydro, wind, perhaps coffee – but not really nuclear. But of course, Washington has a nuclear plant – Columbia Generating Station – and nothing really stops any state from using nuclear energy.

Still, we were a bit surprised to find in the Seattle Times a pretty clear-eyed article.

Demand can easily rise 10 to 15 percent over the several years it takes to permit and build a substantial power-generation facility.

So, by all means continue to implement conservation and support all the wind, biomass, solar, geothermal, wave and tidal power that can be brought online.

But realize we can't stop there. We must also have full-time baseload power generation to back up intermittent renewable-power sources to ensure we have power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

In Washington, the two realistic options available today for full-time baseload power are natural gas and nuclear power.

It gets better.

Tired attempts to link commercial nuclear power to vastly overblown cost and risk factors and defense wastes are irresponsible. Used commercial nuclear fuel is a valuable commodity that can be recycled, as is the routine in many of the world's nuclear-energy countries. Approximately 95 percent of the used fuel in every commercial reactor can be recycled safely, thereby reducing dependence on foreign energy sources and minimizing the need for new uranium mines.

We have no particular beef with new uranium mines – they’re pretty low impact environmentally – but this is an exceptionally straightforward look at the issues. Sid Morrison, who wrote it, is chairman of Energy Northwest's executive board; Energy Northwest is looking at introducing some new nuclear units – small, Back to the Future-ish small, units – into the mix. An opening salvo, perhaps.

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The technology already exists to make huge reductions in greenhouse emissions from coal, allowing power companies to begin cutting the carbon footprint of coal today. Instead, advanced-technology coal power sits on the shelf while regulators wait to see what happens with a project that may be just an expensive boondoggle.

Yes, this would be clean coal. Or more exactly, coal gasification.

The new approach turns coal into a gas similar to natural gas, which runs through a device similar to a jet engine. Such plants can achieve near-zero emissions of toxic material and chemicals that form smog, and they require about a third less coal than regular coal-fired power plants to produce an equal amount of energy, which means about a third lower greenhouse gases.

Further:

A gasification power plant with sequestration would have around two-thirds lower greenhouse gases than a conventional coal-fired generating station.

All this comes from Gregg Easterbrook, not an energy guy, so he’s a lot looser with words like “should work.” And there is this:

One reason Virginia gave for the denial [of a coal gasification plant] was the higher up-front cost of a gasification plant. Yet, once greenhouse gases are regulated (and President Obama’s cap-and-trade plan would in effect tax carbon), the economics of gasification plants may become attractive, with low-emission plants costing less to run.

That’s even looser – nuclear energy, of course, has high up-front costs, too, but the cost of producing electricity over the life of the plant mitigates that issue considerably and nuclear energy is mature and well understood. Coal gasification, as Easterbrook demonstrates, needs a fair amount of wriggly verbiage to overcome a lot of uncertainties. We’d hesitate to ding Virginia on this one.

And we guess that means that, while we always wish our coal cousins well in their pursuits, this story has not dislodged the niggling doubts that persist in our thinking about king coal. There is this: an admission that the coal industry is advancing in innovative ways to keep its relevancy high and its future potential alive.

That space needle certainly dominates the skyline of Seattle. In Atlanta, where I went to school, it was the blue dome atop the Hyatt Regency Hotel, now dwarfed by newer buildings. Maybe the mark of a city that’s arrived is an odd building that dominates photos and creates a way for us to say, Oh, that’s Seattle!

The Wabash River coal gasification plant in Indiana. A quite impressive sprawl.

"20 Worst Things To Hear At A Nuclear Power Plant"

These are funny:

1. Fission shmission, relax, I'll increase the water level
after my coffee break.

5. Who forgot to pay the water bill?

10. It's Russian technology.

17. Is that a 60 minute film crew out there?

20. Look at the good news: we are going to find out whether
people actually glow in the dark.

Be sure to check out the rest!

The View from Mecklenburg

The South Hill Enterprise says that it has the “largest paid circulation of any Mecklenburg County newspaper,”  which we take to mean it gets whomped by penny savers but otherwise has cornered the market in southern Virginia. Enterprising reporter Lisa Andrews went out to see how the local population was responding to the passage of the Energy bill in the House. Andrews also talks to the Washington politicians, but let’s just glide right by them.

Local farmer Hart Hudson said Friday, “I am not in favor of anything that will increase the cost of production.” Hudson said he supports the VFBF [Virginia Farm Bureau Federation] stance and he urged others to oppose the passage of the bill as it makes it way to the Senate.

Well, that’s to be expected, if a little narrow-band.

Dean Price, owner of Red Birch Energy in Bassett, referred to the bill as a way to use “trickle down” economics and to encourage local farmers to spend locally. “This legislation will allow more American entrepreneurs and farmers like me to grow and sell our own energy,” Price said. “These kinds of jobs can’t be outsourced and will be a huge part of a new economy and business model in Southern Virginia.” He said that the economy is on the verge of an economic boom.

We hope Mr. Price is right about the economy. We looked up Red Birch Energy and found that it is a biodiesel concern that uses local canola to make its diesel fuel.

“I encourage the Senators and Congressmen of the Fifth District to notify the small farmers in the area how this bill will impact them and how they can take advantage of the opportunities included in the bill,” President of the National Black Farmers Association John Boyd said Monday. “I would like to see them holding meeting and keeping the rural farmers up to date on the progress. Ultimately the bill will reach rural America. It will come to us, an area that doesn’t normally get affected by such legislation. We will feel the impact of the solar power and it will help rural America.”

We like Mr. Boyd’s expansive nature a lot, but reckon every energy initiative has a considerable impact on farmers. We took a peek over at National Black Farmers Association Web site and found that Mr. Boyd created it on his own and really has a beef, so to speak, with the USDA. You can read all about it over there.

The 13th annual Picnic in the Park is set for this Friday from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. in Parker Park. The free event features music, kids games, popular concessions, and, of course, the biggest and best ever fireworks display provided by Dominion Fireworks.

I might have aimed my camera differently, but if you’re around Parker Park, drop by.