Renewable Green Nuclear Energy: Here, Now

American Thinker ^ | February 15, 2012 | Alan Aszkler with Stephen Tauriello

[neverdem]

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama declared: "I will not walk away from clean energy[.] ... After all, innovation is what America has always been about[.] ... This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy -- a strategy that's cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs."

President Obama may not walk away from clean energy, but he has turned his back on an innovative American-made nuclear technology meeting all the above criteria and much more.

Yes, renewable green nuclear technology does exist. It was invented in Oak Ridge, Tennessee decades ago!

During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, ORNL developed a Thorium-Based MSR, or Molten Salt Reactor. This remarkable new-age nuclear technology dispels every environmentalist fear used to denigrate a true American innovation. The Oak Ridge MSRE (Molten Salt Reactor Experiment), developed as a means to power aircraft due to its compact size and the relative safety of molten salt fuel, was successfully operational from 1965 to 1969. However, a nuclear reactor that is unable to produce bomb-grade material made this technology unattractive in a Cold War world.

The Oak Ridge MSRE was decommissioned in December 1969 by simply being turned off. The thermal safety plug made of ice melted, allowing gravity to drain the molten salt fuel into a containment tank. No meltdown occurred like at Fukushima. No concrete sarcophagus was required like at Chernobyl. No damaged reactor taken offline like on Three Mile Island. Twenty-five years later, the nuclear salt was readily processed and shipped with minimal risk to a storage facility, where it will be inert and totally safe in about two hundred years.

Now, in 2012, MSRs have so much more to offer! MSRs produce energy by adding Uranium-235 to thorium fluoride...

[U-238]

You can use nuclear waste as an energy source.

[wita]

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy — a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.”

A large bureaucracy, a stonewalling executive branch, and the wailing’s of long nose in your face environmentalists, need to be E L I M I N A T E D for this policy to bear fruit.

[Iron Munro]

The only thing “green” about Obama’s energy programs is the color of the money that has been stolen from taxpayers and channeled to his pals and supporters.

This is the most venal, crooked theiving president to occupy the White House in living memory. That is saying a lot when you think about the other contenders for the honor.

[NicknamedBob]

"You can use nuclear waste as an energy source."

Nuclear energy, without radioactivity, is chemistry.

[Daffy]

Man’s “greatest innovation since fire;” NOT an exaggeration.

Ten-minute video introduction to the technology, Kirk Sorensen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

[TXnMA]

"Nuclear energy, without radioactivity, is chemistry."

Who said Thorium MSRs are without radiation? Are you hyping LENR?

(A physical chemist nicknamed, "Bob"...)

[NicknamedBob]

Reading comprehension there, TX².

My point is that without radioactivity, only chemistry is left.

For those concerned that fission, its isotopes and tendency to disintegrate at unpredictable intervals, is just "yucky" and without redeeming qualities, I offer this:

Naturally occurring radioactive elements led researchers like the Curies into avenues of understanding about how things are put together, and how they fall apart.

This information, useful as it is in its own regard, is doubly important in creating a stairway to a truly wonderful and unlimited future of energy plenty for all.

Once fusion has been brought down from the mountaintop by a new Prometheus, (who may have been Dr. Robert Bussard), we may dispense with such concerns as running the carbon cycle on overdrive, and how to relocate all the Bangladeshis.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link!

[U-238]

One gram of Strontium 90 can produce 10,000 watts of power and watt of heat. Just imagine a pound of it.

[TXnMA]

"Nuclear energy, without radioactivity, is chemistry."

I was basically agreeing with what I though was the direction you were taking with your true statement.

~~~~~~~~~

Tossed a coin; read you wrong. Sorry 'bout that! ;-)

~~~~~~~~~

My "LENR" should have been a clue to my emphasis...

To my knowledge, LENR ("Cold Fusion") proponents like Rossi claim to have produced excess energy -- but have not consistently recorded radioactivity.

Without nuclear radiation, "LENR" -- as you so rightly point out -- is "chemistry".

~~~~~~~~

I -- and, apparently you -- expect a knee-jerk rejection of Thorium MSR powerplants by the media-fed populace, because they are "nuclear" and (to the hoi polloi) are "Yucky") .

Most Westerners have zero comprehension of orders of magnitude; they can't distinguish "trilllion" from "pico". Hence the idiocy of "Anthropogenic Atmospheric CO₂", the Federal budget, and fear of Hg from "compact" (versus long-tube) fluorescent lamps.

...and, "half-life" doesn't even produce a blip on their TV-fogged RADARs... :-(

~~~~~~~~~

I find the radiation risk from Thorium MSR power to be quite acceptable -- but, then I have managed to make it nearly 3/4 of a century without noticing that natural background radiation makes me glow in the dark... </SARC> '-)

(Full disclosure: as a kid, I was one of those blessed to actually own and use an A.C. Gilbert "Atomic Energy Lab"...) :-)

[NicknamedBob]

"To my knowledge, LENR ("Cold Fusion") proponents like Rossi claim to have produced excess energy -- but have not consistently recorded radioactivity."

It's not clear what's going on with LENR, (understatement), but there are fusion reactions which do not produce neutrons, (aneutronic). These are quite interesting, but I do not believe they are happening in LENR either.

It's possible that the extra heat comes from some unknown chemical or physical reaction independent of nuclear energy. My attitude is the practical one; if heat is appearing without adequate explanation, I have uses for heat also.

"I have managed to make it nearly 3/4 of a century without noticing that natural background radiation makes me glow in the dark..."

You do glow in the dark! It's called infra-red.

But aside from that, natural background radiation is just as deadly as any other source of it, but we have come to an accommodation with it.

In fact, it may even help to keep us healthy by exercising our immune systems! And people living in Denver get twice as much as the rest of us.

However, the real source of radiation is in our diet. Potassium, which is a necessary nutrient, has a relatively stable and quite common isotope which is naturally radioactive. You, and everyone else of normal proclivities, have quite a bit of K-40 doing fireworks in your body at all times. You're a regular Fourth of July guy, actually quite scintillating in your radio-active activity.

But as before, this is quite natural, and not entirely harmless, but we have come to an accommodation to it. Just as the body needs to continuously supply oxygen to all its parts, the immune system is constantly picking up the pieces of the nuclear ticker-tape parade going on in your Main Street.

Considering all this, the nonsense about unnecessary concern over nuclear power is simple ignorance and the folly of being manipulated. The burning of coal in electrical power plants releases, (exposes to atmospheric distribution), more "radioactivity" than all of our nuclear processes combined.

[Neoliberalnot]

Thanks for posting the link.