

Introducing a bold nuclear energy initiative to win an election? - rickmaltese
http://thoriummsr.com/2012/08/what-happened-to-the-idea-of-a-president-introducing-a-bold-initiative-to-win-an-election/

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PythonDeveloper
Wow. You guys must REALLY be desperate.

~~~
rickmaltese
Which guys? The democrats or the thorium and nuclear advocates? Would you care
to elaborate?

~~~
dalke
The thorium and nuclear advocates. In the 1950s, during the 'Atomic Age', we
heard over and over that nuclear power plants were safe, and the power source
of the future. The Atomic Energy Commission said that nuclear power would soon
be as cheap as power from other sources. We said 'go ahead!'

It's easy to be optimistic about thorium and nuclear energy. The problem is
that our optimism has burned us before, and in big, easily obvious ways at
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, but also in the difficulties of
radioactive waste management. And we don't have practical evidence that
thorium power really will be useful, only assurances from the same sorts of
people that said, back in the 1950s, that fission power was safe and would
soon be as cheap as that from conventional sources.

Reread the letter from the Telegraph. It doesn't want to deal with the decades
of lying "self-serving opponents of anything nuclear science", and the "waste"
that is the Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear waste, nor the effort to
"convince the anti-nuclear voters that their thinking has been wrong."
Instead, the author wants to make an end-run around to entire system: bypass
the legislative system and the popular vote, and appeal directly to the
executive, almost as if the executive were tzar.

That's why the letter sounds desperate. It's thrown its hands up at democracy.

The obvious, and mentioned, analogy is to Kennedy and the moon program, but
there was already popular support for the moon program; at the very least from
pulp novels and TV shows. There was also no existing wide-spread concern about
the public dangers of rockets. Therefore I don't see how they really are
comparable.

~~~
rickmaltese
More than REALLY desperate. How about seriously concerned for the well being
of the planet? I guess if I were to die knowing that I helped reverse a
calamity that allowed future generations to enjoy their futures rather than
dwindle from disease, extreme weather, economic collapse or even a Mad Max
scenario which might be a best case scenario, then I'd feel it was worth this
effort.

All I want to happen is that some form of energy that does not create green
house gases to replace the coal plants and other polluting sources that are
currently ruining the lives of many forms of animal and plant life on land and
in the seas.

We can make very good educated guesses about Thorium molten salt reactors that
can be made better than the already successful experiments that took place at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory back in the 60's and 70's.

Scientists who actually study nuclear energy know that the damage caused by
the fossil fuels has been far, far greater than that cause by nuclear energy.

If I were preaching to the President to lie to the public then that would be
pathetic. It would be non-democratic to try to go with the whole mess without
getting the people's approval but that is not what the article is saying. I
wrote the article and I do believe that people want to know the truth and if
someone like Obama were to suddenly start down that path there is a much
better chance that he would get that message across than anyone else.

In case you had not noticed every election year is getting further and further
from democracy because neither candidate is addressing the real problems in
their campaigns. When they do get elected after a close election nothing much
changes. They are criticized for false promises. Well I'm only asking that
something valuable actual be part of the agenda.

The system does not work very well. The wealthy can damage an opponent
anonymously by funding smear campaigns just because the opponents want to
improve conditions for the majority of the population.

The four year cycle that every president has does not get enough time to
implement his plans and he's blamed for the damages caused by previous
regimes. The republicans successfully blocked most of Obama's ideas for change
then they criticize him for not doing anything.

The fear factor has played a role in preventing technology from advancing.
Besides the assassinations of the 60's and the terrorist attacks that keep
killing people the irrational fear has been growing. Fear of things people
don't understand is normal to some extent. What is beginning to be less normal
is that people are willing to be fed information without investigating and
seeking the truth.

The Chernobyl accident is the only truly serious nuclear accident that took
place. It is well documented. Even a little research reveals that Chernobyl
was unique because it had no containment. That is why people died. The other
two you mention had far less radiation and no deaths occurred at Three Mile
Island or are predicted by the well informed scientists and professionals at
Fukushima.

The article is really just an exercise to make the reader think.

~~~
dalke
You asked why it sounded desperate. I gave you an answer. Now you're saying
that you're "REALLY desperate." Then why did you ask the question when you
already knew the answer? Ahh, but at the end you said it was "really just an
exercise to make the reader think", so I take it it was not meant to be
convincing.

I already addressed your point about "very good educated guesses." That is,
the people in the 1950s said that they made "very good educated guesses" about
the reactors then being designed, which in turn were based on "already
successful experiments." It's the same sort of people making the predictions
now - how do we know that their predictions are any more well grounded?
Freeman Dyson, in "Disturbing the Universe", gave a reason which resonates
with me. In short, you need multiple iterations to get a the technology
working well, and the reactors which came online in the 1950s-1970s were too
early in the evolution cycle. The exception was military reactors, which went
through lots of iterations, but of course which aren't appropriate for utility
power generation.

Which is exactly how the Moon missions worked - build plenty of rockets, watch
them explode, figure out what went wrong, and do a new iteration. How many
iterations of thorium power plants will we need to develop in order to make
safe, efficient, economical thorium power plants? One, ten, one hundred? What
practical experience justifies that estimate? So permit me to feel skeptical
when I read echoes of the rose-colored promises from the Atomic Age which
mention nothing about the practical matters learned the hard way.

You may say that all you want is "some form of energy that does not create
green house gases" but the article barely mentions other non-greenhouse-gas
systems, and mostly dismissively in the ambiguously written line "The newest
reactors produce far less waste, run far more safely and are far more reliable
than solar or wind." (It's ambiguous because it reads like 'the newest
reactors run far more safely than solar or wind', when it's trying to say that
they are safer than older reactors.) It also mentions nothing about improved
energy conservation.

I never said anything about preaching to the President to lie. You (since you
say you are the author) are the one who calls people liars, specifically the
"self-serving opponents of anything nuclear science."

Your comments about the political system are only somewhat applicable. The US
is not the only political system in the world. India has strong economic
incentives to go towards thorium, and have a technological base at least equal
to the 1960s US, yet they don't predict working thorium reactors for at least
another few decades. BTW, your argument seems to be that everything's getting
corrupted, and you just want things to go corrupt in the way you want it to
be. I am morally opposed to that justification.

You mistake the lesson I took from TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, which is
that people don't like reactors because dense power sources which can't
trivially be shut off are suspect. Coal is 'safe' because its direct failure
modes is to catch on fire, and that's easily handled. Solar is 'safe' because
its direct failure mode is to stop generating electricity. Wind is 'safe'
because its failure mode is to fall down. Hydro based on large reservoirs is
less safe, because the history of dam breaks shows that they have some pretty
nasty failure modes. All of these 'safe' systems have have hundreds of design
iterations and improvements, and real-world failures. Note that by 'safe' I am
not including environmental impact. The term "safe" has several different
meaning, and I'm limiting it to just this one.

This article was supposed to make me think? It made me think that the author
understands neither people nor politics nor history.

~~~
rickmaltese
I never wanted an argument. I think you are using my article to show off a few
of your own personal pet peeves. You are trying to squeeze my article as an
example of those but I think you are trying to fit a round peg into a square
hole. The word desperate is really inappropriate since desperation implies
that I have some sneaky agenda. Over 15 years of experiments and research is
not guess work which took place in a real laboratory. The guesswork I was
referring to was that which will take place to do even better reactors than
have already been built. The Molten Salt Reactor was very easy to operate.
When they finished a weeks work. They simply turned it off for the weekend and
turned it back on the following Monday. That cannot be done with the reactors
that became the dominant reactor Light Water Reactors.

~~~
dalke
You wanted comments else you wouldn't be here. I gave comments. I certainly
gave some of my own peeves. I thought that was obvious.

Look, I'll say this again. You asked which of the two PythonDeveloper thought
were desperate. It's pretty obvious that he meant the author of the essay
about "the thorium and nuclear advocates." Now you completely agree that you
are desperate. Why did you ask the question if you weren't looking for an
argument? The non-argumentative one would be "yes, I am desperate; Desperate
that we as a civilization won't be able to survive."

You think that desperate implies a sneaky agenda. It doesn't. Here are all the
dictionary entries: "1. reckless or dangerous because of despair or urgency: a
desperate killer. 2. having an urgent need, desire, etc.: desperate for
attention. 3. leaving little or no hope; very serious or dangerous: a
desperate illness. 4. extremely bad; intolerable or shocking: clothes in
desperate taste. 5. extreme or excessive." Notice how none of those imply a
sneaky agenda.

Nor am I against reactors. I'm explaining, the best I can, why anything
associated with nuclear power is viewed with deep distrust. Referencing work
from the 1960s doesn't help. That's from the same era of researchers which
downplayed the negative consequences of Operation Plowshare. The problem is
that the public reaction against decades of official optimism, which
deliberately deemphasized the actual consequences, cannot be easily overcome
just by more optimism.

The only way to do it is to set up pilot plants _now_ , redo the same sort of
engineering project as the MSR but using the fixes suggested from that project
(I believe KAMINI did that), and then develop a demonstration pilot plant
which actually produces power, test out the entire lifecycle (including
breeding U-233 from thorium), present all experienced problems with
radioactive contamination, effect of fluorine on the pipes, etc. And above
all, make that information available for public and expect rejection.

This work of convincing the public cannot be done in a single presidential
term. It'll be at least 5 years just to get the full engineering data. Hence,
I find the proposal that the President should use Roosevelt's bully pulpit to
advocate the issues on a national scale at odds with what I think is the right
way to actually do this.

Furthermore, you wrote "When they finished a weeks work. They simply turned it
off for the weekend and turned it back on the following Monday." but based on
<http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSREexperience.pdf> , they most
certainly did _not_ have a weekly work schedule. It does not appear that you
are working from the primary or even the secondary sources to make the above
statement. Is you're above statement meant metaphorically? As it, I interpret
it as truthiness.

In any case, you are confusing the issues. TRIGA is safe enough that it can be
operated by undergraduates, and it can also be "turned off for the weekend." I
think it can even be turned off for lunch. While power production reactors are
a different scale entirely. Can you tell me how much decay heat will come from
a thorium MSR which has been generating 300 MW use for 6 months? Can that sort
of power reactor be so easily shut off and walked away from?

I read that the MSR decommissioning costs were higher than expected.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-
Salt_Reactor_Experiment#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-
Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Decommissioning) says "the MSRE cleanup project was
estimated at about $130 million", including a possibility for a nuclear
criticality accident caused by the U-233 remaining in the system. To say
nothing of the "one atmosphere of fluorine" gas above the solid salt. Are
those costs and problems amplified in a full-scale commercial power plant?

And if you want to talk about alternatives to light water reactors, then one
should also look to pebble bed reactors. Wikipedia quotes Richard Muller as
saying they are "in every way... safer than the present nuclear reactors, and
arguably safer than the global-warming danger posed by fossil fuels." Now,
where have I heard that argument before? Note that PBRs had problems which
were only identified by building reactors, and more PBRs have been built then
thorium ones. Why should I presume that thorium MSRs won't also have problems?

