[ExI] Written for another list

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012  Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:


> > The large stockpile of Pu-239 is actually your best chance to bootstrap.
> Good riddance to bad rubbish.
>

Yes, a LFTR might be able to harmlessly burn up Plutonium and other
radioactive crap, and that's better than just trying to find a place to
hide it away.

> > I too think Uranium breeders suck.
>>
>
> > Didn't expect to hear that from you, but we're distinctly on the same
> page here.
>

I even think regular Uranium reactors suck, at least the big ones in power
plants, maybe not as much as breeders but they still suck. But a LFTR is
not just a slight modification it is RADICALLY different from anything that
exists today and that's the problem. Nuclear technology is moribund and its
bureaucracy is as cumbersome as anything in the western world, even getting
a new reactor built with conventional design would be virtually impossible,
trying something entirely new like a LFTR would be impossibility squared.
And the electric utilities that run the plants have no reason to chage,
they're accustomed to pressurized water power plants, and because of
government subsidies they typically pay more for security guards than the
Uranium fuel that powers the whole thing.

Meanwhile the environmentalists keep telling us how dreadful global warming
will be, but apparently not dreadful enough to even consider something like
a LFTR even though it produces no greenhouse gasses because it involves the
"N" word. So they just keep dreaming about powering civilization with
butterflies.

> The Germans did have the THTR, but apart from being not a breeder it had
> too many problems, so they killed it.


Yeah and the THTR was very modern by reactor standards, it was shut down
only 23 years ago during the Chernobyl panic;  but just like virtually all
reactors made during the last half century it used solid fuel. The fact is
that no molten salt reactor, not even a small experimental one, has existed
on planet Earth since 1969, and I find that as astonishing as it is
inexcusable.

> Canada and India (and a few lesser countries) are still working on the
> thorium fuel cycle,


And they're using solid nuclear fuel too, you'd think we'd have learned by
now that's not a good idea.

> Fusion, particularly Tokamak fusion is making fast breeder power look
> like a bargain, by a factor of 100 at least. Throwing good money after bad
> on ITER is not very sane.


Yeah, I'm not holding my breath but I'd be delighted if both of us turn out
to be wrong about that; and they'll probably get some good science out of
it even if they don't get any energy out of it.

> I reserve some judgement on inertial confinement/laser ignition, but it's
> probably not going to
> work out either


I hope the name of the place "The National IGNITION  Facility" turns out to
be appropriate but it never would have been built without support from the
military, since testing H-bombs is frowned upon the only way to know what
happens when one goes off is supercomputers or a super powerful LASER, and
now they have both. Oh well, it'll probably help us understand how
supernovas and Gamma Ray Bursters work.

> You'll see that at least China is converting their coal to synfuels,
>

The Nazi's did that 70 years ago and it powered their war machine, it
wasn't green energy then and it isn't now.

> If I had to spend money now, I would look at nitrogen fixation at close
> to RT conditions and methanol synthesis and methane synthesis and methane
> fuel cells. As well as MWh scale electrochemical storage
>

Can you visualize powering the blast furnace in a  steel mill with
something as dilute as solar energy, or with batteries, or windmills? I
can't, but I can see a conventional nuclear power plant doing so although I
don't like them very much, and Uranium breeders really give me the creeps;
so it's time to investigate LFTR's, we should have done it 40 years ago.

  John K Clark
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