Your lifetime supply of energy

To slow global warming, we must not only stand against dirty, C02-emitting sources of energy, we must also unite behind clean energy that all the world can afford—energy that is inexhaustible, green, and cheaper than coal.

This inexhaustible source of energy is a “new” and very safe form of controlled nuclear fission called the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR), a reactor that is radically different from the Light Water Reactors (LWRs) in use today and that uses abundant thorium (pictured above) instead of uranium as its primary fuel.

Just imagine

 ü  Energy security for the entire world, not just developed countries, with zero C0₂ emissions

 ü  Water security for the entire world via LFTR-powered desalinization

 ü  LFTR-generated hydrogen for use in creating synthetic fuels to replace gasoline and diesel

LFTRs make all this and more possible.

Why would we use LFTRs when we have solar and wind as energy sources?

The primary impediment to the adoption of solar and wind energy is cost. Solar and wind energy are 3-to-4 times more expensive than fossil fuels. There is little incentive for all the nations of the world to use them. And as we know, it's hard to get human beings to act against their own economic interests.

LFTRs, on the other hand, can produce energy more cheaply than burning coal can, making them economically advantageous. Even developing nations will be able to afford energy, and the entire world will have a strong economic incentive to replace coal with LFTRs.

How can fission be safe?

LWRs use solid fuel. LWR cores get very hot and water is used to cool them. To keep the water from boiling, LWRs must have large and complicated containment structures to keep the water highly pressurized (at 60- to 150-earth-atmospheres of pressure). If the containment structure is breached, radiation can be released through escaping steam. If cooling cannot be maintained, the reactor can melt down (as at Fukushima).

LFTRs, on the other hand, are designed to run with a molten core. They are much safer than LWRs because no high-pressure coolant containment structure is needed. LFTRs cannot melt down. LFTRs are also safer because they produce less than 1% of the radioactive waste associated with LWRs, and that waste becomes harmless in a few hundred years (as opposed to many thousands of years for LWR waste). Additionally, LFTRs can consume the radioactive waste produced by LWRs, thereby reducing the amount of overall nuclear waste on the planet.

LFTRs are also not useful for producing weapons-grade plutonium (whereas LWRs are). LFTRs are also far safer than coal and natural gas as energy sources. (Consider, for example, that burning coal leads to 34,000 more deaths a year from respiratory illness in the U.S. alone. Aside from 28 deaths attributed to the Chernobyl accident, LWRs have been relatively safe, and LFTRs are far safer than LWRs.)

Why haven’t LFTRs already been built?

Motivated by political as well as business pressures, Richard Nixon killed the U.S. LFTR program in the early 1970s and fired Alvin M. Weinberg as director the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for his continued advocacy of LFTRs as a much safer and cleaner form of nuclear power. However, recent renewed interest has resulted in China starting an LFTR program and also in some private efforts in the U.S. The U.S. government, however, has so far been uninterested.

More information

For a ten-minute introduction to LFTRs, see this TED talk:

    http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html

Robert Hargraves' book (via Amazon.com) on why LFTRs are our best chance of dealing with our energy problems:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1478161299/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For some background on why Nixon cancelled LFTRs back in the 1970s:

    http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=bbyr7jZOllI

Robert Hargraves' Facebook page for LFTRs:

    https://www.facebook.com/ThoriumEnergyCheaperThanCoal

Energy from thorium website:

    http://energyfromthorium.com/

Note that there is a good bit of misinformation on the web about LFTRs, including comments from outgoing Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu.

If you have questions, please post to this blog. I'll try to answer them.