Thorium Nuclear Reactor Not the World Savior

Subtitle: Archibald Writes Wrong on Thorium

A recent article on Watts Up With That, WUWT (see link) sings the praises of thorium-fueled nuclear power plants as the savior of the world.  The article is by David Archibald, "a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C."  

Mr. Archibald could not be more wrong in his assessment - with one small exception, see end of this article. 

Thorium molten salt reactor schematic
source: Idaho National Lab

As written in several articles on SLB, nuclear power in any form is hopelessly uneconomic, impractical and unsafe.  see link, and link, and link.   As a result, almost full subsidy from government is required for any nuclear plants to be constructed and operate  (see link). 

Mr. Archibald opines that fossil fuel will disappear "soon" and only thorium-based nuclear power will be available.   He states that solar and wind will be unable to provide power, especially economic power.  

He states that a 250 MWe thorium power plant would be the basis for new plants.  This suffers from the same economy of scale problem that plagues small nuclear reactors (see link).   He further makes the mistake of using overnight (estimated) cost for the fully installed cost of a plant.  He uses $3,246 per Kw for overnight cost and a plant size of 250 MWe, then states the installed cost is $800 million each.   The fact is, as written on SLB (see link), major industrial projects require far more costs than just overnight cost.  The costs associated with material and labor inflation over time, and interest on construction loans can easily double or triple the overnight costs.  Construction schedules, or time to construct, typically stretch far beyond initial estimates, with actual time from start to startup being 8 to 10 years or more.  

Now, as to what Mr. Archibald got right.  He correctly stated that coal will run out.  His timetable is off by a couple of centuries, but he is correct that it will run out.  As earlier stated on SLB, the facts that coal will soon run out, and coal presently provides almost one-half of the world's electricity present one of the biggest challenges of our times.  Perhaps, it is the single biggest challenge.  

The alternative to coal is not nuclear, as Mr. Archibald states, but the vast amounts of free, renewable, zero-pollution, reliable power provided by ocean currents, solar, and wind with appropriate energy storage.  Note carefully, though, that ocean current power needs no storage.  (see link) 

I have not read the comments on Mr. Archibald's article at WUWT, but they are sure to be entertaining.  And for the most part, very wrong.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2015 by Roger Sowell

Forecasting the Future - Hubris or Honesty

Subtitle:  Coal Exhaustion Looms - Renewable Energy to the Rescue

"It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future," - attributed to Yogi Berra.

In any event, a few articles on SLB have alluded to the future, if not outright predicted the future.  One article made the case for Peak Oil as non-existent, and argued that the US should build several coal-to-liquids plants to help reduce the world price of crude oil see link. Another described future energy supplies, with renewables and regenerables as the primary supplies see link.  Still another described the near-impossibility of having nuclear power plants as the long-term supply of energy  see link.  Another described the outrageous power prices that would result from an all-nuclear-powered grid see link.  

For another quasi-quote:  "A foolish man maintains his opinion no matter what the facts are.  A wise man considers new facts, and modifies his opinions accordingly."  - paraphrased.  

A new fact presented itself to me a few days ago, and after giving it some thought, it is time to modify an opinion.  The new fact is that coal, that mainstay of electric power generation world-wide, is in shorter supply than I had remembered.  In fact, several reputable sources now state that world reserves of coal will be exhausted in roughly 60 to 70 years - and that is if no increase in current consumption occurs.  Yet, growing economies in several countries are increasing their coal consumption year-over-year.  China and India are on that list.   It is entirely conceivable that coal will run out in less than 50 to 60 years.  

What then, are the alternatives?   From Yogi's quote above, it may be futile to make predictions.   It was only 135 years ago when no one had electricity, because the first generators connected to a grid were started in approximately 1880.   Only 70 years ago, the first atomic energy was created - and that was a bomb, not a power plant.   How, then, can one predict the future of energy supplies 100 or 200 years into the future? 

One thing we can do is examine the existing energy mix, and see what will be available in 100 years.  We note that power is generated today by hydroelectricity from water flowing from dams, by burning natural gas in power plants, by burning coal in power plants, a small amount by burning oil in power plants, by nuclear fission in power plants, and a small amount by renewables such as geothermal, wind, and solar.   There are also some very small experimental plants for ocean waves and tides, and river currents.  

However the greatest source of modern electricity is burning coal, at 41 percent of the total in 2011 (source, IEA).  Next is natural gas at 21 percent.   The people who drill for gas are quite good at finding more as the need arises, drilling in new areas or deeper in old areas.  In addition, we know that great stores of methane exist in the cold, deep ocean as methane hydrates.    The same is not true for coal, however.  

Coal is only economic if it can be mined and brought to the surface at fairly low cost.  Indeed, coal must exist in a seam at least 2 feet thick, and at less than 4000 feet depth, or it is stranded, left in place.  CalTech's Professor Rutledge gives an excellent overview of world coal reserves in his 2011 paper.  ("Estimating long-term world coal production with logit and probit transforms,"  International Journal of Coal Geology, 85 (2011) 23-33 ).  He paints a grim picture.  Roughly, there are 500 billion tonnes of mine-able coal left in the world, and the existing consumption rate is 7.8 billion tonnes per year.  This provides approximately 60 to 70 years of coal remaining.   However, a slight positive note is that Rutledge did not include coal deposits near the Arctic, in Alaska North Slope, and Siberia's Lena and Tungus fields.   Whether those fields in the harsh, cold far north can be produced economically is an open question. 

As stated earlier, nuclear fission is not a candidate due to resource limitations, outrageous cost, and serious safety concerns.  The world is in great need, then, dire need actually, of a replacement energy source for coal and nuclear.  Together, that is nearly 55 percent of today's energy production.  

Knowing this, it makes sense to turn to the renewables: wind, solar, and ocean current.  It may also be possible to make the ocean-temperature-difference technology (OTEC) work.  If the technologies still need a subsidy to advance so they can stand alone and provide electricity at reasonable rates, then prudence dictates the subsidies be made.   

Advances in grid-scale energy storage have been made, with underwater storage in the shallow oceans an excellent candidate.  Similar systems can be deployed around the deeper Great Lakes in the US.  

Is this hubris?  Will engineers and planners of the year 2100 read this or similar articles, and get a good laugh?  It could happen.   Until some major technology improvement or discovery occurs, though, this is about the best we can do.  We can alter our grids so that power can flow from onshore turbines in windy areas to storage facilities.  We can install large, economic wind turbines offshore and store the power underwater in hollow spheres for later use.  We can maintain the improvements in solar photo-voltaics, primarily efficiency and cost reduction.  A recent announcement showed that 40 percent efficiency has been achieved in PV (2014).   We can install and test slow-speed ocean current turbines, and tap into the incredible amounts of energy in the ocean currents.   

The problem is made much, much more acute when one considers the effect of population growth, and the increase in energy-per-capita.  A growth rate in electricity consumption of only 2 percent per year will triple electricity demand in only 55 years.  (the STEM majors will run that calculation and verify it as 2.97, close enough to 3.0)   Even more sobering is that number will again triple in another 55 years.  That puts the world needing 9 times the present energy in only 110 years.   That puts Professor Rutledge's 60 to 70 years for coal-exhaustion as an optimistic figure.  We may well run out of coal long before that.  

When various governments decide to continue subsidies for wind, or solar, or fund research into alternative energies, and some decry these as a waste of money, I hope someone points this article to them.   What would the nay-sayers do?  There will be a grim day of reckoning when the coal runs out.   It would be far, far better to have proven, economic means to provide grid-scale electricity at least a decade before the coal-runs-out-day. 

It may be possible, someday, to gasify coal in-situ and collect the gasified product at the surface and do all this economically.  There is research into this.  The practical challenges are, however, enormous.  One must essentially start a fire in the coal-bed, deep underground, with sufficient oxygen to maintain the burning.  The economics of oxygen injection make the entire thing questionable.   Also, a patent from 1980 describes injecting methanol and steam into a coal bed to produce methane.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 
Marina del Rey, California

Long-Term Energy Supply

Subtitle: If Not Nuclear, What Then?

One of the grand questions for those who think about the future, especially the long-term future, is "what type of energy source will the world need?"   A corollary question, following the usual statement of "we will someday run out of fossil fuels", is "what will we do after we run out of fossil fuels?" 

The most common answer to the "what will we do?" question is "use nuclear power, of course!" as if that is the obvious answer.   Many, many scientists and others have concluded that nuclear power is the only long-term source of energy for society. 

I have a different view, and will expand on that here and in other posts.  One of the purposes of the Truth About Nuclear Power series on this blog is to show that nuclear power has many, many disadvantages and should never be the energy source of choice.  

Brown bear.  source: wiki commons

A story illustrates.  Two men were camping in the wilderness, which was known to have bears.   Each night before going to sleep, one man carefully put on his socks and track shoes.  The other man said, "that is silly.  If a bear wants you, wearing track shoes is not going to help you outrun the bear."   The first man replied, "I don't have to outrun the bear.  All I have to do is outrun YOU."

In the complex scheme of evaluating and developing energy supplies, a long-term source is not required to be economically superior to natural gas with its high efficiency and low construction cost, or coal with its very low energy cost.  All the long-term energy source must do to "beat the bear" is to be lower cost and safer than nuclear power.   Of course, to be used on a modern grid, the electric power must be, by law, safe, reliable, low-cost, and environmentally responsible.  

The TANP articles have shown that nuclear power cannot compete economically, and has structural or inherent flaws that make being competitive impossible.  Reasons include but are not limited to the inherent danger of radioactive fuel, extra safeguards to prevent radiation release, larger equipment due to low plant efficiency, more equipment needed just to run the plant, difficulty in following the grid's load, ridiculously long construction periods that add to interest and inflation costs, government subsidies in many forms just to coax utilities to build the plants (without the subsidies in their many forms, no one would build a nuclear plant), and smaller, modular plants have far worse economics than the grand, 1000-MW or larger plants.   The ultimate issue, though, for long-term sole-source nuclear energy is that power prices must be increased by a factor of 8 to 10 compared to present prices (this was covered in Part Two of TANP, see link)

If not nuclear power, what, then, will be the energy source of the future?  The answer is a mix of energy types, but in general they can be classified as 1) renewable and 2) regenerated.     Under the renewable heading, there are hydroelectric, onshore wind, offshore wind, solar in at least three forms, geothermal, cellulosic ethanol, photosynthesis of algae to oil, synthetic photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for sale, organic liquids as bio-diesel, ocean waves, ocean current, OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion), and river mouth osmosis.   

Under the regenerated heading, there are methane capture from landfills, methane capture from cattle feedlots, methane from steam hydrogasification of organic sludge (sewage treatment plant sludge) see link, municipal solid waste to energy (see below), and the ultimate energy source: Carbon dioxide conversion to methane.  It has long been known how to convert carbon dioxide back to methane by removing the oxygen and adding hydrogen.   What is needed to make this economic is simply very low-cost energy.  More on this, a bit later in this article. 

Some of the above energy sources are non-steady, variable, and intermittent and thus require a grid-scale, economic energy storage system.  Such systems have been developed.  The most promising system is one developed by MIT and is one of the simplest: submerged hollow spheres in the medium-deep ocean to serve as pumped storage hydroelectric systems.   The surrounding ocean serves as the upper body of water, and the interior of the hollow sphere serves as the lower body of water.   Such systems can also be placed in lakes that are sufficiently deep, such as Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.   Another SLB article (see link) showed that presently, the US has grid-scale, pumped storage hydroelectric capability at just over 22 GW.  The PSH capacity is expected to increase to approximately 30 GW,

A bit more than 5 years ago (March, 2009), SLB had an article on Renewables in Outer Continental Shelf (see link).  That article quoted the US Department of Energy 2009 study that concluded there is 900 GW of energy in the offshore wind in US territorial waters.  That is very close to the installed US electrical capacity.  After allowance for intermittency issues, and a 20 percent loss from pumped storage systems, approximately 275 GW of reliable power is available from offshore wind.  

With offshore wind coupled to grid-scale storage, onshore wind providing energy to existing pumped storage hydroelectric systems or expanded to their 30 GW potential, cellulosic ethanol from the recently-published breakthrough in genetically modified lignin Poplar trees, recovered methane from landfills, cattle lots, and methane from reprocessing of bio-sludge, fossil fuel reserves can be extended for many, many years.   Even if such reserves were to finally deplete and no new technologies can be found to recover, for example, the 50 percent of oil that is estimated to remain in depleted oil fields, and methane hydrates are found to ultimately be uneconomic to recover, the renewables and regenerated fuels will be here forever.  

The municipal solid waste as a renewable fuel has great potential.  A U.S. utility patent, 7,452,392, was issued in 2008 to Peter A. Nick and his team of Southern California chemical engineers.  The system produces a medium-Btu gas from waste, and produces power by burning the gas in a power plant.  

Converting carbon dioxide to methane can be accomplished with cheap power at night, perhaps from wind.   The wind energy would split water to form hydrogen, then combine the CO2 with the hydrogen to yield methane and water.  

This has focused on the USA, to this point.  The rest of the world also has similar opportunities.  Conversion of sewage sludge to methane requires first that the sewage be captured and treated.  From there, the conversion to methane is straightforward.  Landfill and cattle waste methane are certainly available world-wide.   Different geographic features will dictate what each country selects as its power source.  It may be solar in the Sahara, for example.

Worldwide, the most significant ocean current in the world has the potential for vast electrical generation.  That current is the Southern Current, that circles the entire continent of Antarctica.  While it is in a remote area, the potential is incredible.   Similarly, the wind also blows strong and steady around Antarctica, in what are referred to as the Roaring Forties.  

The reality of renewable, and regenerated, power is the costs per kWh are steadily declining.  Meanwhile, the cost to construct nuclear power plants is increasing.  The beauty of renewable and regenerated power is there are no radiation concerns, and no long-term toxic spent fuel concerns.   

The future looks bright, indeed. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California