permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Elvin <marimike6@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: [permaculture] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)
Technology - Thorium Fueled Power Plants
To: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>

Chris offers some interesting points... but ones on which reasonable people
hold differing opinions.

Yes, thorium has to be mined. But currently the world is facing a huge
disposal problem for thorium "wastes" that have already been mined in the
search for rare earths. This mining is certain to go forward, as they are
among the world's most desirable and useful substances right now. So we're
going to have to figure out what to do with all that thorium in any event.
At present it's just lying around in piles.

As it burns clean, with virtually no residue, it seems like a logical way
to dispose of it.

Second, is it "unproven, with plenty of safety issues"? Well, not exactly.
There are technical problems, as there would be with any new technology.
But these are being explored very actively now, and no one has come up with
anything looking like a deal killer. R&D costs would seem also to be very
low, for a nuclear technology. Something on the order of a not-to-exceed
one billion dollars would allow us to build a small pilot plant and explore
these issues on a practical (non-laboratory) scale.

It is unproven only in the sense that it hasn't been done yet at full
scale. The theory has been in place since 1946.

I'll have to say there are so many obvious advantages to liquid salt
reactors that displacing our current coal, gas and hydro-based electric
generators with a nuclear technology that can apparently scale down to very
small plants, has its obvious advantages. Solar and wind, for instance,
take up huge amounts of land and tend to be generated far from their
customers. So transmission lines take up even more land. This thorium
approach would seem to leave us with a smaller footprint.

Accordingly, I would respond to Glenn by asking him whether he thinks it
likely that the human race will voluntarily be going back to a pre-fossil
fuel technology, and using mules to haul its crops. In a sense, that would
be nice. But I think it's unlikely to happen.

The best thing about thorium is that it displaces our largest uses for
fossil fuel, that is, electric generation and refining of heavy fuels like
tar sands and oil shales. It even would displace fossil-based vehicle
fuels. Electric vehicles would finally become pollutant-free if they could
be charged by nuclear-provided electricity. As it stands, every electric
car on the road means more coal torn from the mountains and burned, with
Sox, Nox and mercury going up the chimney. As such, LFTR technology looks
to me like a part of the solution.

Best part: at $30/kilo and current rates of energy consumption, we have
several hundred thousand years of the stuff in the planet's crust. It's as
common an element as lead, and recycles very efficiently in the reactor.

I think the approach is worth taking a very hard look at. (Of course, Plan
B would be just to stop driving, or doing anything at all requiring energy.
But life before the Industrial Revolution wasn't all that much fun either,
I hear.)

Please feel free to post this response, LL.  I think the dialog you're
engendering on your list is well worth having.

PS-- I will definitely be reading the two links Chris has provided.

M. Elvin

  ------------------------------
*From:* Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
*To:* Michael Elvin <marimike6@yahoo.com>
*Sent:* Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:07 PM
*Subject:* Fwd: [permaculture] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)
Technology - Thorium Fueled Power Plants

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Chris Lumpkin* <clumpkin@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)
Technology - Thorium Fueled Power Plants
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>

Thorium is far from a panacea, unproven and plenty of safety issues. It is
also, at the end of the day, just another technology based on extraction.
Dr. Tom Murphy has a great breakdown of nuclear options from a
sustainability perspective here:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-options/

and a great discussion of "The Energy Trap", which prevents us from
investing in tomorrow's solutions when today's energy is scarce:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/

-Chris

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 11:25 PM, Glenn Gall <glenngall@gmail.com> wrote:

Thorium won't stop global warming  Or flooding, drought, extinction,
desertification, deforestation, hunger, acidified oceans etc., for that
matter.   The globe is already warm, and will warm another degree F, no
matter the energy source, unless there is a lot more life in the biosphere
and soil, and in a hurry.  The other effects are already present, and will
also worsen without more life to stabilize our earth.

Thorium may or may not satisfy many of our energy needs, but it won't bring
a planet back to life. I'm willing to discuss the possibility of thorium
energy, but but as an energy fix.  Don't hype it as an earth-system fix.

More life, a massive amount, is critical, no matter all the other good and
necessary things we do.  How much more is anybody's guess.  And how we do
it ...?   It will need to be much more than reducing our carbon footprints,
much more than personal responsibility.

And much more than thorium.

Glenn