We are responding to Eve Newman’s Ames Monument article – a fascinating story – and Klaus Halbsgut’s comment – a nice comprehensive review – in the April 4th Boomerang.
Both discuss the Rail Tie project from the point of view that we are either building a wind farm with 300 MW (nominal output) (to stimulate the economy, create jobs, make our contribution to climate change, etc.) and tolerate the downside (compromised visibility) , Bird killing, sound energy that drives ranchers [and cattle?… and game?] 26,000 acres of farmland, immense cost of capital in dollars and carbon emissions etc) … or we don’t.
Proponents of both positions generally argue intelligently (just a little idiocy), but generally neglect or reject a third position: a solid, perfectly viable alternative to a wind farm as a source of 300 MW of clean electricity.
We would advocate a new type of nuclear reactor as such a source (notwithstanding the merging of the downside of today’s rectors with the dangerously complacent “no nukes” mentality of our culture).
The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), one of several innovative molten salt reactors currently of growing interest as our perceived need to deal with anthropogenic climatic disturbances increases, was in advanced development at the Oak Ridge National Lab in the late 1960s, shortened when the program ended. (A competing technology, the type of reactor we have today, was chosen for final development for reasons unrelated to its later problematic civilian use.)
An LFTR with a rating equivalent to that of Rail Tie would take up perhaps 5 acres, compared to the 26,000 acres projected for Rail Tie. It wouldn’t detract from the local ambience; but that’s debatable because it wouldn’t be in the open spaces anyway. The operational efficiency for an LFTR would be 95% or more, versus 30-40% for Rail Tie (reflecting a reliable vs. intermittent energy source).
Load following is the ability to quickly change the power output to follow a change in the power load, such as
Power generation fired by an LFTR would easily follow load changes, but wind power just can’t. Wind energy is irregular and intermittent; it can only be part of a load following system, in combination with stored energy or a reliable emergency power supply – currently coal or gas firing – or both.
As Mr. Halbsgut claims, battery technology is improving. But to secure a decommissioned 300 MW wind farm, storage would have to be massive, costly, and consume large amounts of material resources – none of that would apply to an LFTR.
We believe battery development would be best geared towards transportation and should not be wasted on large-scale wind (and solar) storage. And backing a wind farm with coal or gas fired electricity is also a terribly costly option and poor use of natural resources that negates the wind farm’s proposed benefit of eliminating operational CO2 emissions.
We agree with Mr. Halbsgut that wind turbines are no idiots, but we have found that most people are unfamiliar with the LFTR and its enormous potential. The final design, manufacture and deployment of the LFTR would be inexpensive compared to the cost of equivalent large-scale wind turbine design and would not require further subsidization.
And then there is the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI), a key figure. An EROEI of 1: 1 would mean that every bit of work you do is needed to produce the energy for it, with nothing left to do anything else – like just eating every minute of the day to find food and stay alive. Any labor or material resources required to generate energy will affect all other activities that consume the energy.
We need an EROEI ratio of around 15: 1 to sustain our current civilization. We no longer get this EROEI from burning fossil fuels, and large-scale wind cannot reach it either. We need the dirt-cheap load-following energy that comes from LFTRs – and not from wind turbines. We estimate an EROEI of maybe 100: 1 from LFTRs.
And with cheap energy from LFTRs for electricity, high temperature process heat would also come to convert our coal and oil resources into useful chemical products, to strengthen and maintain our economy, and to greatly increase our government revenues through VAT on these products. (Eg graphite, graphene, diesel fuel, etc. made from coal; lubricants, pharmaceuticals, etc. made from petroleum.) We want to finally acknowledge that coal and oil are far too valuable to burn.
Finally, let’s remove one of the persistent barriers to LFTR development, our fear of ionizing radiation. The popular story that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful is downright wrong.
Several studies have shown that an effect called hormesis actually makes small amounts of such radiation beneficial to our immune systems; that hormesis actually lowers the risk of cancer. The radiation phobia has driven regulatory costs immensely and wrongly for no real scientific reason. If all ionizing radiation was harmful, why should we diagnose with X-rays?
Disposed radioactive waste from today’s reactors poses no real threat to the environment. Still, you don’t want it to pile up and hang around for tens of thousands of years to become sluggish. LFTRs have the advantage that with 1 / 10,000 of the radioactivity that becomes inert in about 300 years, they generate about 1% as much waste as today’s reactors.
Several LFTR fission products have valuable medical and other uses. In addition, molten salt reactors similar to LFTRs can “burn” today’s nuclear waste by reducing its volume by a ratio of 100: 1 and its radioactivity by a ratio of 10,000: 1. This would represent yet another income generating industry to improve Wyoming’s economy should we be wise enough to see this and brave enough to manifest it.
If you have read this far and would like to pursue our argument, you can (thanks, Klaus!) Google for “molten salt reactor”. We imagine that after some study, you will seriously consider LFTR technology as the key to a brighter future – for Laramie, for Wyoming, for our country, and for our planet.
Laramie Residents David D Earnshaw and Retired Scientists David A Copeland are co-founders of the Wyoming LFTR Energy Alliance.
Laramie Residents David D Earnshaw and Retired Scientists David A Copeland are co-founders of the Wyoming LFTR Energy Alliance.
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