Energy Independence A Congressional Primer

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Table of Contents

WHAT IS THORIUM? ............................................................................................................................. 3

WHY THORIUM? WHY NOT URANIUM? ............................................................................................ 10

WHY NOT WIND OR SOLAR? ............................................................................................................. 14 FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................... 17 UNKNOWNS IN THE SHORT-TERM .................................................................................................................. 17 IT GETS WORSE .............................................................................................................................................. 18 AND WORSE YET! ........................................................................................................................................... 19 AND EVEN WORSE! ......................................................................................................................................... 19 AREN’T THERE ANY SOLUTIONS? ................................................................................................................... 20 HERE ARE SOME TYPICAL QUESTIONS TO ASK: ............................................................................................. 21 DENMARK? ...................................................................................................................................................... 23 FORECASTING .................................................................................................................................................. 23 THE SUBSIDY ARGUMENT ............................................................................................................................... 25

SAFETY OF LFTR ................................................................................................................................. 29

LIQUID FLUORIDE THORIUM REACTOR.......................................................................................... 29 PROLIFERATION RESISTANT ........................................................................................................................... 32 THE CORROSION FACTOR .............................................................................................................................. 32

LFTR REVENUE STREAMS.................................................................................................................. 34 ELECTRICITY .................................................................................................................................................... 34 DESALINIZATION OF WATER ........................................................................................................................... 34 WASTE WATER STERILIZATION ...................................................................................................................... 34 HYDROTHERMAL RESIDENTIAL HEATING UTILITY ......................................................................................... 35 PHARMACEUTICALS ......................................................................................................................................... 36 MUNICIPAL WASTE DISPOSAL ........................................................................................................................ 36 SHALE OIL AND TAR SANDS ........................................................................................................................... 37

THE PLAN ............................................................................................................................................. 39

POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS ................................................................................................................... 41

ECONOMIC BENEFITS ........................................................................................................................ 42

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What is Thorium?

Thorium (symbol Th, atomic number 90) is a radioactive chemical element. Thorium is

a silvery-white metal at room temperature, but will readily oxidize when exposed to air,

and only occurs naturally in oxidized form. Although Thorium is not fissile, it can be

bred in a nuclear reactor to the Uranium fissile isotope U-233, and so has potential as a

nuclear fuel source. Thorium is also used as an alloying element with other metals, and

is the primary ingredient in gas lantern mantles.

Thorium naturally occurs in the Earth's crust, at a concentration of around twelve ppm

(roughly the same as lead, and four times that of uranium). Although Thorium is

radioactive, its fourteen billion-year half-life (the longer the half-life the less potent the

radiation) is so long that most of the Earth's original Thorium is still here. The primary

ore where Thorium is found is in monazite mineral deposits, which can have up to 10%

Thorium content by mass; a few other minerals, such as thorianite and euxenite, also

contain significant amounts of Thorium.

Although many countries have large Thorium reserves, Thorium is not very widely

mined except in China; its applications as a metal are limited by its radioactivity, which

makes it potentially dangerous if inhaled or ingested in very large amounts. Thorotrast,

a Thorium compound once used for medical X-rays, was abandoned due to safety

concerns. Ironically, Thorium's high density and atomic number make it an effective

radiation shield, although lead and depleted uranium are more frequently used.

Thorium, by itself is not fissile, so it cannot easily be used to make an atomic bomb or

nuclear reactor. However, when Thorium is inserted into a nuclear reactor, the high

neutron flux characteristic of the reaction causes some of the Thorium to transmute to

U-233, which is fissile. U-233 can then be used to sustain the nuclear reaction and

transmute more Thorium, creating a closed nuclear fuel cycle, which makes Thorium a

potentially very valuable energy source. Historically, natural uranium has been cheap

enough as a fuel to make further develop the Thorium nuclear fuel cycle unnecessary.

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However, with current uranium prices, some governments now have developed plans to

build Thorium-fueled reactors in case of a disruption in the dwindling uranium supply;

some heavy water reactors, such as the CANDU design, can already use some small

amounts of Thorium.

Before the advent of electric lighting, Thorium mantles were frequently used as a light

source; when heated with a flame, certain Thorium dioxide alloys will glow with a

dazzling white light. This glow is unrelated to radioactivity and comes from the

chemical interactions of Thorium, cerium, and oxygen. Unless swallowed or otherwise

taken into the body, mantles and other Thorium products are quite safe for everyday

use, as the radioactive alpha particles Thorium gives off cannot penetrate the skin.

Thorium is the most energy dense element of all the known elements. Thorium has an

energy density 200 times that of uranium. $50,000 worth of Thorium will create the

same amount of heat as $300 million worth of coal and $10 million worth of Uranium.

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Rare Earths and Thorium are linked at the mineralogical level and so wherever rare

earth elements are found, Thorium is found as well.

As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements ("REEs") or rare earth metals are a set of

seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides

plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements

since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar

chemical properties.

Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive element

promethium) are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th

most abundant element at 68 parts per million (similar to copper). However, because of

their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed, with the

exception of monazite formations, and are not often found in concentrated and

economically exploitable forms. The few economically exploitable deposits are known as

rare earth minerals. It was the very scarcity of these minerals (previously called

"earths") that led to the term "rare earth".

Most rare-earth elements, in one form or another, are used in some type of modern

electronic equipment or aerospace application.

Rare Earths represent the only bridge between technologies of the past and the

enhanced state of performance for most current technology. Currently, China controls

97% of the production for light rare earths and 99% of the global production for heavy

rare earths. By leveraging its global monopoly China now commands and controls most

of the value chain for heavy rare earths, including research, commercial development

and IP (patents).

In order for the United States to participate in the modern economy of advanced

material science related products, the U.S. must become a self- sufficient producer of

these earth products at every level of the value chain. This is not possible without a

radical change in U.S. policy regarding Thorium. Currently, the U.S. EPA imposes

upon rare earth mining facilities handling, processing, and disposal techniques

equivalent to that of handling nuclear waste. These EPA imposed processes make it

economically impractical to mine rare earths for manufacture and processing here in the

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United States. As a result, the EPA hamstrings efforts to create thousands of jobs in the

United States. Many believe this policy to be overkill as the element Thorium has less

of a radioactive signature that the common household natural gas grill.

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Z

Symb

ol

Name Selected applications

21 Sc Scandium Light aluminium-scandium alloy for aerospace components, additive in Mercury-vapor lamps.

39 Y Yttrium Yttrium-aluminium garnet (YAG) laser, yttrium vanadate (YVO4) as host for europium in TV red

phosphor, YBCO high-temperature superconductors, yttrium iron garnet (YIG) microwave filters.

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57 La Lanthanum High refractive index glass, flint, hydrogen storage, battery-electrodes camera lenses, fluid catalytic

cracking catalyst for oil refineries

58 Ce Cerium Chemical oxidizing agent, polishing powder, yellow colors in glass and ceramics, catalyst for self-

cleaning ovens, fluid catalytic cracking catalyst for oil refineries, ferrocerium flints for lighters

59 Pr

Praseodymi

um

Rare-earth magnets, lasers, core material for carbon arc lighting, colorant in glasses and enamels,

additive in didymium glass used in welding goggles

[4] ferrocerium firesteel (flint) products.

60 Nd Neodymium Rare-earth magnets, lasers, violet colors in glass and ceramics, ceramic capacitors

61 Pm Promethium Nuclear batteries

62 Sm Samarium Rare-earth magnets, lasers, neutron capture, masers

63 Eu Europium Red and blue phosphors, lasers, mercury-vapor lamps, NMR relaxation agent

64 Gd Gadolinium Rare-earth magnets, high refractive index glass or garnets, lasers, X-ray tubes

, computer memories, neutron capture, MRI contrast agent, NMR relaxation agent

65 Tb Terbium Green phosphors, lasers, fluorescent lamps

66 Dy Dysprosium Rare-earth magnets, lasers

67 Ho Holmium Lasers

68 Er Erbium Lasers, vanadium steel

69 Tm Thulium Portable X-ray machines

70 Yb Ytterbium Infrared lasers, chemical reducing agent

71 Lu Lutetium PET Scan detectors, high refractive index glass

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Why Thorium? Why not Uranium?

Current nuclear reactors LWR (Light Water Reactor) fuel/reactor designs impose large

environmental burdens. From Uranium mining and refining through secure, energy-

intensive fuel fabrication and handling, on to optional, secure waste processing and

transport, and finally to storage of radioactive wastes in ways that must be made safe

for millennia. Most of these detriments are derived directly from decisions made after

WWII to continue civilian nuclear power from the Manhattan Project’s vast Uranium-

processing infrastructure -- encouraging LEU (soLid Enriched Uranium) fission-fuel

cycles that create materials suitable for weapons and leave various weaponizable wastes

that decay over hundreds to tens of thousands of years.

Fortunately, many scientists and engineers, who had helped develop current designs

(including Alvin Weinberg: father of the LWR Light Water Reactor), knew and were

concerned about the limitations and shortcomings of solid Uranium-fuelled, water-

cooled reactors (LWRs) for civilian use.

Starting with abundant Thorium solves many of the issues now associated with our

present nuclear LWR designs. With the Thorium reaction we breed U-233 within the

reactor itself at about a 140 to 1 total energy improvement over current, un-reprocessed

LEU from LWR’s. The isotope U-233 fissions with about 90% probability, compared to

U-235’s 80% fission probability in present LEU fuels, and this means far less reactor

waste when starting with a Thorium reaction and breeding U-233 instead of the U-235

reaction in present day LWRs.

The very first commercial LWR, located in Shippingport, PA was, in fact, converted to

use Thorium plus Uranium oxides upon its final refueling in 1977. It proceeded to

produce more fissile fuel than it consumed over its next 5 years of operation, beating

output expectations by 160%. Breeding fertile U-238 to fissile PU-239 also nets a total

energy benefit of about 100:1 by consuming all the Uranium in the reaction. The AEC’s

Atomic Energy Commission’s 1962 report stated all this clearly (page14)…

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“The overall objective of the Commission’s nuclear power program should be to foster

and support the growing use of nuclear energy and…make possible the exploitation of

the vast energy resources latent in the fertile materials, uranium-238 and Thorium.”

Thus, if we had followed the 1962 recommendations, our ~440 LWRs might be history

and we’d now supply world electric power with ~2400 safe, more efficient breeder

reactors, consuming ~1/16 the total Uranium per reactor we now do as LEU, or none –

we’d be using far more abundant, ordinary Thorium.

The Shippingport LWR design, using standard Uranium fuel, was also chosen for

Admiral Rickover’s Nuclear Navy, being installed first in the submarine Nautilus, and

subsequently in newer submarines and aircraft carriers -- the military did not want

ships to be dependent on frequent refueling stops. Presently, nuclear submarines are

fueled once or twice in their entire life, while carriers may receive an additional

refueling (which actually consists of swapping out the entire reactor core as a single

maintenance unit). Refueling cycles of 20-30-years are possible.

Because of the Cold War, all common reactors came to depend on the same fuel –

enriched (to ~4% 235U) Uranium. This fuel (LEU) can be further enriched for nuclear

weapons into HEU Highly Enriched Uranium. And, the major isotope (238U) breeds

Plutonium 239 within a reactor, both fissioning it for energy and allowing its removal

(via reprocessing) for extra fuel or for Pu fission bombs. At the end of the Cold War, our

nuclear-power and weapons industries had cemented in their technologies, so that the

entire chain, from Uranium mining, through enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor

design, construction, operation, refueling, waste storage/reprocessing and

decommissioning had attained industrial, economic and bureaucratic rigidity rarely

matched by any other human systems of producing energy.

Thorium, like Uranium, Lithium, Beryllium and others, is easily converted to a salt,

such as Thorium Fluoride (ThF4). Salts are extremely stable under intense radiation,

they melt at high, but industrial temperatures, and they have excellent thermal

properties for heat transfer from reactor cores to thermal loads. This knowledge led to

the design (from 1954-1974) of what are called MSRs Molten-Salt Reactors. They were

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one of the two breeder designs recommended to be implemented quickly by the AEC

Atomic Energy Commission in 1962. Unfortunately, only the LMFBR Liquid Metal

Fast Breeder Reactor received sufficient support. But MSRs today is one of Department

of Energy’s six Generation-IV reactors slated for some support. We believe this effort

should be highly accelerated.

As Generation IV designs, MSRs directly address many key shortcomings of current

LWRs and even offer a solution to present nuclear fusion-research reactors’ inability to

maintain their own Tritium budgets. They also address anti-proliferation concerns for

nuclear weapons and, like Fast-Neutron reactors, provide means for destruction of

weapons/waste material and because of revived international research and development

interest, the MSR, loaded with ThF4 Thorium Fluoride (known as LFTR Liquid

Fluoride Thermal Reactor), will be shown to be an example of future, worldwide, cheap,

and safe nuclear power. Abundant and safe power also means the ability to create

abundant necessities, such as fresh water through desalinization. The high power

density of Thorium and much greater efficiency mean much lower environmental

impacts and greater flexibility in site selection. All these factors combine to address

sustainability and economic progress.

Yet, we still have limited support in the US for better reactor design and some interest

in utility-funded, standard reactor construction. It’s not that alternate nuclear-power

paths were never opened; it’s that Cold War policies dampened our own research,

leaving the world with few developed options now that they’re essential. There’s no

fission source as cheap or as lasting as the Thorium breeder. Yet, we in the US have a

regulatory agency, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), holding just a few basic

LWR power-plant designs for prospective builders to choose from, with some mix and

match of components. Each of those designs requires about $10 billion and many years

to complete. No utility can afford that type of investment, which is why our present

administration has promoted loan guarantees to get new nuclear plants built. Yet, even

that hasn’t worked because of liability and legal hurdles imposed by extreme

environmentalists. Furthermore, the US NRC reports to Congress and can do only

what that body mandates and funds. No work on alternative reactor designs, fuel cycles

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and rules can be expected from the NRC itself without new appropriations.

Even a 1977 EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) report on the usefulness of

Thorium in LWRs gained no industry action. Some new work has been funded by DOE,

but not yet near the level needed even if it continued from the excellent decades of work

funded by the AEC and DoD Department of Defense at ORNL Oak Ridge National

Laboratories. Similarly, private investors see no near-term return, but great risk,

because nuclear reactors require extensive proven design for safety and regulation – the

function that government agencies and research normally perform.

The problems of not developing Thorium are many:

America will continue to lag behind China in new technologies developed from

Rare Earths.

America’s economy will suffer because it cannot compete against China’s near

monopoly of Rare Earths.

America will be tied to a much more unsafe nuclear technology that produces an

almost unsolvable waste problem.

If another country develops a LFTR reactor before America it will give that

country an advantage in almost every respect in the economics of

manufacturing.

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Why not Wind or Solar?

Wind and Solar technologies are not sustainable, are not economic, and are impractical

for many reasons. Wind and solar technologies, from their manufacture produce CO2,

indirectly produce CO2 from their complimentary power systems, and have a large

footprint in the eco system that kill plants that would otherwise convert CO2 into

Oxygen.

Here is an example of impracticality by size:

How many 1.5-MW General Electric wind turbines (the kind Pickens has chosen for his

wind farms) would it take to produce the same amount of energy that Ohio's two

reactors produce?

First, we divide the amount of energy that the reactors produce, 4,400 megawatts, by

the nameplate rating of the wind turbine, which is 1.5 MW. That gives us the number of

wind turbines that would be needed to produce that same amount of energy as the

nuclear reactor: 2,934 wind turbines.

We are looking at the energy density of wind energy and we need to know how that

capacity factor is figured. The capacity factor represents the amount of energy actually

produced by the wind turbine, divided by the amount of energy at which the wind

turbine is rated. The average wind turbine has a capacity factor of 25%, which means

that it will take four wind turbines to equal the nameplate-rated output of one wind

turbine. Basically, this means the wind is only blowing 25% of the time in Ohio and the

nameplate rating is rated as if the wind was blowing 100% of the time.

Given that fact, we must now multiply our 2,934 wind turbines by 4, which gives us

11,736 wind turbines, rated at 1.5 MW each.

Now, let us look at the amount of land area that would be needed for these 11,736 wind

turbines. General Electric, the producer of the 1.5-MW wind turbines used in this

example, recommends spacing the wind turbines at three times the diameter of the wind

turbine rotors, so that the wind trailing off the rotor doesn't affect neighboring wind

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turbines. GE also recommends that the spacing between rows of wind turbines be five

times the diameter of the wind turbine rotor, so that the next row of wind turbines can

make use of the available wind.

The General Electric 1.5-MW wind turbine has a rotor diameter of 262.6 feet. To get

an idea of the size of the wind turbine, the area that the rotor sweeps out is big enough

to place a 747 jumbo jet inside.

To figure the spacing of the wind turbines, let us multiply the rotor diameter of 262.6

feet by 3, which gives us 787.8 feet as the spacing between the wind turbines. Now let's

figure the distance between the rows of wind turbines by multiplying the rotor diameter

of 262.6 feet by 5, which gives us 1,313 feet between the rows.

If we multiply 787.8 by 1,313 it will give us the total area required to site one of our 1.5-

MW wind turbines. This comes out to 1,034,381 square feet or about 22 acres of land

for one 1.5-MW wind turbine. If we now multiply the 22 acres by the 11,736 wind

turbines, we get 258,192 acres, which is 403 square miles (about five times the size of

the metropolitan Cleveland area). So it appears that it will take 258,192 acres of land

covered with wind turbines, to have a part-time generating capability equivalent to that

achieved on 2,000 acres of land for the traditional nuclear power plants.

Wind energy advocates purposely confuse the availability factor and the capacity factor

in their promotional materials, to try to demonstrate that a certain number of wind

turbines can produce the same energy as a nuclear power plant. In truth, although the

availability factor of the wind turbine is 100% because it is available to produce power at

any time, wind turbines actually produce power less than 25% of the time, and that is

only when the wind blows. Compare this to the nuclear power plant, in which the

availability factor and the capacity factor are the same—about 95%. The only time the

nuclear reactor is not producing power is during maintenance periods.

Solar and wind power share another problem. As they are intermittent sources, they

require backup power systems and a complex relationship with the power grid, whereby

the power flow can be switched on and off at various times. The backup generators

make the wind power "dispatchable" so the energy can be called upon when needed. So

when you flip a light switch the power is there to light your light. In other words, the

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wind turbine only operates 25% of the time and when it is not operating a natural gas

turbine is normally running the other 75% of the time. Nuclear power plants produce no

CO2 but fast ramp NGT (Natural Gas Turbines) do. In most cases, NGT's produce

more CO2 than modern day Natural Gas power plants. With that excess CO2 of the fast

ramp technology supplementing the wind turbines or solar panels 75% of the time there

is an insignificant difference in CO2 production between natural gas power plants and

alternative energy a combined with its complimentary power source.

So, indirectly, all solar and wind projects do create CO2 whereas nuclear power plants

do not.

You can say for every wind turbine you see, that it is creating 75% more CO2 than what

would other wise be in the atmosphere if we were to use nuclear energy.

Also, as wind turbines are placed, by necessity, in more remote wilderness locations,

wind generators incur an added expense of many miles of additional transmission lines.

In the case of the example all the consumers on the grid, who will have already

subsidized the wind farms through huge tax subsidies to the wind energy speculators,

will incur the cost of literally thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines for

the unneeded wind installations.

Couple the need for continuous maintenance of wind turbines, the maintenance of the

wind turbine transmission lines, the roads to service the turbines and lines......the

amount of CO2 consuming plants that were killed because of the wind turbine

construction and service roads......turbines that kill birds with rotor strikes.....and you

can see very quickly....green energy has a much larger detrimental effect on the

ecosystem than traditional energy sources.

Worse yet, because of our Government's stance on the mineral Thorium, America

cannot compete with China in producing wind turbines and solar panels because they

use rare earth minerals.......so, if we are to not over pay for energy we will create more

jobs for China because of our stance on Thorium.

The example above shows traditional nuclear power in Ohio at 4,400MW on 2,000

acres of land. This equates to 2.2MW produced per acre.

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Wind takes 258,192 acres to produce that same 4,400MW and equates to .015MW per

acre.

Ohio's example is that traditional nuclear is 146 times better at producing energy per

acre.

First, some Background

For all practical purposes the grid itself has no capability to store electricity in any

useful amount. The generation of electricity must match, on almost a second-by-second

basis, the demand at all times. This matching of supply and demand is critically

important to the stability of the grid – if it is done badly, the customers will experience

the effects very quickly, in the form of brownouts or worse. Needless to say, a steady

supply of electricity is one of the fundamentals of an industrialized society; our standard

of living takes a very quick drop if the supply of electricity isn’t available when we need

it.

Many years ago, the utility companies were responsible for doing this matching. With

deregulation, in most jurisdictions, there now exists a quasi-government organization

whose job it is to arrange for and then control the different suppliers. Names like ISO

(Independent System Operator) or TSO (Transmission System Operator) are used to

describe this organization. The ISO has a long historical record that allows them to

predict quite accurately how much electricity will be demanded at any point in time.

With conventional power generation they are able to control the supply quite

accurately. By controlling the supply and knowing the demand they could highly

optimize the generation to lower costs and emissions.

Unknowns in the Short-Term

The advent of wind power introduces a new uncertainty into that operation. Not only

could the instantaneous demand change in (hopefully small, on the order of a megawatt

or two per minute) unexpected ways, but now the generation can also change in not-so-

small unexpected ways. The wind operators won’t release information they don’t have

to, but one, Warren Katzenstein, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University,

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managed to get some minute-to-minute data for a presentation and a study. It shows

that the output can go up or down by multiple tens of mw’s in a single minute! For a

typical 200-mw project the changes would be twice what this chart shows.

The remaining generators (coal, gas, hydro and nuclear) must be tweaked not only to

adapt to changes in demand, but now also to adapt to changes in wind supply. If our

goal is to reduce fossil emissions you would use wind to replace coal and gas plants, and

thus you would tweak them first. Tweaking nuclear isn’t practical in any event; it runs

pretty much at full power constantly, providing “base load”. Depending on the facility,

tweaking hydro is possible. But using CO2-free generation plants to back each other up

doesn’t save on CO2; only replacing fossil fuel plants does. Coal plants don’t like to be

tweaked, and are too slow to respond to the changes that wind can introduce. By default

gas plants become the preferred choice.

An important consideration of how to provide this backup is determining how quickly

the controllable supply can be tweaked to match the demand minus the wind supply.

The best circumstance would be to have a unit that consumed no fossil fuel until it was

needed and then switch it into full production instantly. This circumstance is, by the

way, what the advertised CO2 savings numbers all assume. Unfortunately no unit, even

gas, is that quick. All ISO’s maintain a “spinning reserve” of generators that are kept in

phase with the grid but generating at less than their capacity. Some of that reserve is

used to back up potential failures; and now some addition reserve is needed to back up

wind. Also unfortunately, when a fossil fueled generator is run at something below its

capacity its emissions go up, potentially enough to cancel out the savings from burning

less fuel – and as mentioned above there is a surprisingly small reduction in fuel burned

to begin with.

It Gets Worse

There are two types of gas turbines used in power generation – Simple Cycle Gas

Turbine (SCGT, or sometimes OCGT, Open Cycle Gas Turbine) and Combined Cycle

Gas Turbine (CCGT). CCGT is the most efficient, emitting around 0.35 Tons of

CO2/mw-hr, as opposed to SCGT, which emits around 0.5 Tons CO2/mw-hr.

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Unfortunately, CCGT is limited to how quickly it can ramp up or down, with a typical

ramp rate limit of 5mw/min, compared with SCGT, which can handle changes of

multiple tens of mw’s/min. The demand on Ohio’s grid seldom, if ever, changed

unexpectedly by more than a few mw’s/min, so CCGT was entirely adequate for this

application. All of Ohio’s major gas turbine plants as of 2005 were CCGT’s.

Unfortunately, the changes in wind output are far beyond the capability of CCGT to

handle.

Let us say you wanted to produce 200mw of electricity. Two choices come to mind: (1)

install a 200mw CCGT and be done with it, or (2)install a 200mw wind farm and

200mw of SCGT. But that gets very expensive to operate – remember that a 200mw

wind project may average only 50mw, leaving an average of 150mw to be produced by

SCGT. It also creates more emissions than (1). To save some money and emissions,

you’d probably have a mix of CCGT and SCGT, and then have to use a higher

proportion of SCGT in the windier months, when the variability of wind is at its

greatest. Option (1) looks better and better, doesn’t it? Kent Hawkins has analyzed this

at length and has published his findings on WCO’s web site. Using any reasonable set of

assumptions, it looks like option (2) ends up producing more emissions than option (1).

Lang, 0.2mb and Hewson, 0.1mb have also come to similar conclusions.

And Worse Yet!

If all this weren’t bad enough, there’s more bad news – truly bizarre. What happens

when there’s too much wind generation? Generally you sell it off, sometimes paying

people to take it. You can guess who ends up paying for this – either the ratepayers or

the taxpayers.

And even Worse!

One way to make fossil fuel plants more efficient is to make them into CHP’s – that’s

short for Combined Heat and Power. Going to CHP sounds like a good idea, but as

always the devil’s in the details. With CHP’s you now have two uses (heat and power)

and two potential user groups for the output. What happens if you don’t need both the

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heat and the power? You can’t just turn off the generator when, for example, the need

for power drops. Other users might still have need of the heat. So you’ve potentially got

to keep the CHP going when you’ve already got excess power. Consider what happens

when there’s even the possibility of too much wind generation, where you end up taking

an emission-free nuclear plant offline and replace it with a “25/75″ mix of wind and gas,

just to keep the CHP’s going. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Aren’t there any Solutions?

If you’ve been doing much research prior to reading this, you probably have heard the

argument, here advanced by AWEA that wind power variations are just like other

power plant failures, and can be handled by the same techniques. Further, using

statistical techniques, the argument goes on to claim that a penetration of 20% can be

handled with current backup facilities with no significant extra emissions, due in part to

geographical dispersion. This may explain why proponents are also big on the “super

grid”. This logic sounds spookily similar to that used by AIG as they piled credit swaps

on top of each other, including the use of statistics to make the risk appear lower than it

really was.

A variant of this is the idea of “net demand”, where wind power is treated as a reduction

in demand, as opposed to additional generation. Traditional dispatchable generators

then “merely” supply the delta with “just” increased unexpected changes in demand. GE,

a major supplier of all types of generation, pushes this variant, perhaps in part because

wind power (and solar power too) generates power so randomly their computer

generation modeling tool (MARS) isn’t able to model it.

Take a closer look at the AWEA link above. On the first page there are 7 bullets with 4

external references all extolling the emissions and fuel savings of wind. The assertions

look pretty impressive, unless you take the time to read through to the references.

There’s no “there” there. NONE of the bullets NOR ANY of the references provide real-

life numbers, just more assertions and computer models.

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Here are some typical questions to ask:

Couldn’t some conventional generators be shut down completely? Of course they can. But

if too many of them are shut down and the winds drops quickly enough the ISO is then

forced to start cutting power to users. In 2008 the Texas ISO got caught, with the

resulting brownouts and shutdowns making the news. And I think it’s safe to say that

any sort of interruption is far more costly, in terms of both dollars and emissions, than

providing proper backup. I see no way around this – the ISO has to keep extra fossil fuel

generation online and spinning, and this produces CO2.

Couldn’t you use hydro as the backup? Of course, within limits. But that assumes you

always have it available. Generally hydro is already being used whenever it is available,

as the water is “free” – both in dollars and in emissions. What would you in turn replace

the hydro with? You’d end up just transferring the generation from hydro to fossil, back

where you started.

Doesn’t the wind always blow somewhere? Not as much as you’d think. John Harrison

did a study that quantifies the relationship in output. In summary, within 400km the

output between wind farms is highly correlated. Tom Adams has done similar research,

with similar conclusion.

Couldn’t you control the fossil turbines to minimize the emissions? Of course you could,

and I would expect the ISO would do so, within all the other parameters they must

follow. But whenever it’s running, it’s still producing CO2. The only question is “how

much?” and that can only be answered with a study, a study that seems to not exist.

Couldn’t you build a super grid and move wind energy (and solar energy as well) around

from where it was generated to where it was needed? Of course you could, but at what

financial and environmental cost? Remember we started out with just wind farms, then

we got into having backup, and now all of a sudden we’re into reworking our entire

grid.

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In the meantime, the Chinese, as well as others,will be installing coal plants that

produce a consistent kw-hr for 3 cents. We already have high wages, and when we add

high-energy costs, you can guess where the energy-intensive industries will go.

Exporting our manufacturing base is certainly one way to cut our emissions; sadly the

net effect on the planet is an increase.

Given the higher cost of energy and the job losses our standard of living will inevitably

start downward. As it does we suspect all political support for any emissions savings

will evaporate, with uncertain political results.

Unknowns in the Longer-Term

So far we’ve been talking about the requirement to balance the grid on a minute-to-

minute basis, and how extra fossil emissions are necessarily generated in order to do so.

There are other patterns of demand that operate on different time scales other than

minute-to-minute. There are also daily, weekly, seasonal and long-term patterns. We

hope that by understanding the shorter-term situation the reader can then apply that

same reasoning to the longer terms as well. One potential solution for the daily problem

would be to use some type of storage that would effectively isolate the turbines from the

grid and allow their output to be used in a controlled manner. Batteries, compressed air,

heated salts, electrolysis are typical candidates. Sadly, none of these technologies are

even close to being deployable, and may never be. If they were we would be much more

positive about the contributions wind turbines could make to our grid. For terms longer

than daily wind turbines do not provide much relief either. Their output is “non-

dispatchable” – it cannot be commanded to contribute. Thus sufficient fossil plants or

possibly a LFTR reactor must exist to meet the weekly and seasonal peaks.

For intermediate-term storage (i.e. daily) there does exist one scheme that might make

wind more effective. That would be pumping hydro uphill in times of good wind and

thus giving hydro power better capacity to handle times when the wind isn’t blowing

very hard. Hydro storage is reasonably efficient – I’ve seen numbers in the 75% to 85%

range. However, it does require some fairly specific geographical conditions that are not

common in Ohio. Lake Erie could possibly be used but there’s the difficulty of balancing

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competing interests, among shippers, boaters, shore birds, cottage owners and all the

other users of Lake Erie. In any event the costs and losses of this operation are not

included in any current wind promotional figures.

As far as I can tell, no fossil plant anywhere in the world has been shut down due to the

advent of wind. Perhaps a few have been shut down due to the advent of the necessary

gas plants, but even that isn’t clear.

Denmark?

Proponents of wind and solar point to Denmark as an example of what wind power can

accomplish, but when you look at the actual numbers, a different picture emerges.

o Notice there’s no relationship between wind production and emissions.

o Overall, there’s been little savings.

o A closer look reveals their shift to CHP plants and exchanges with

neighbors explains almost all of what little savings there have been.

Forecasting

One action that an ISO could take to improve the operation of the grid would be to

remove as much of the uncertainty as possible, thus allowing for the low-cost and/or

low-emission generators to be used at their best. Towards this end ISO’s are now

requiring suppliers to forecast how much energy they will produce, or are creating their

own forecasts. Even the WSJ has opined on this topic in a well-written column. The

Economist also has a well-written column with more details.

Typically this forecast would be used in the ISO’s “day ahead” planning, when they

figure who needs to be available when. For wind suppliers, this means a highly tailored

weather forecast. And where there is money to be made, someone will appear to make it.

The results of a Google search of “wind energy forecasting” will provide the reader

some interesting hits, certainly including better explanations of this whole topic than

we have provided. If the suppliers do not meet their forecast some ISO’s are fining them,

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and I assume the fines in some way compensate the ISO for the excess costs or

emissions caused by a bad forecast. There are also people employed measuring and

statistically analyzing how consistently each supplier meets their commitments so they

know whose forecast they can trust. All of this, just to optimize a resource that nobody

knows the value of in the first place. Incidentally, the ability to accurately forecast also

affects the Capacity Credit.

Note, that we are not saying we know for sure that there is no CO2 reduction benefit to

wind. Our primary point is that we don’t know, and there are very good reasons why

wind and solar CO2 reduction is likely much less than advertised. It is bothersome that

apparently no state government agency seems eager to tell us this. I wouldn’t expect

the wind or solar industry to do so, unless it was good news. In addition to all the above

problems, which are significant, there’s the added unknown of how much wind energy

turbines produce energy that goes off the grid in normal operation due to over capacity.

The actual data, which could be a significant percentage of their output, seems to be a

closely guarded secret.

If our politicians were actually interested in reducing CO2 emissions (instead of just

wanting to appear “green”), they would be far more effective by working on reducing

consumption by opposing intermittent power sources such as wind and solar and

propose research into LFTR reactors. To install 2000 mw of wind power (producing an

average of about 500mw, or about 3% of Cleveland’s electrical consumption) will cost

about $4B, not counting the grid itself nor any backup or storage facilities. For that

kind of money we could develop LFTR and create thousands of jobs and spur economic

growth.

If the technological arguments weren’t already complicated enough with all these

unknowns, this topic is even further clouded over by the carbon trading market, as

detailed in this article and this letter and this opinion piece. Actual carbon reduction

seems to be among the least important goals of the “green energy” movement, with the

desire for money and political power being far more important.

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The Subsidy Argument

When discussing the economic merits of wind energy and the large subsidies wind

energy receives, the argument from a typical proponent is usually something about how

much more subsidies the gas and oil companies receive, and if we’d just level the playing

field, wind would be competitive. The actual numbers, which proponents seem

universally unaware of, tell a different story. The best set of actual subsidy amounts in

the U.S. comes from the EIA Energy Information Administration, which is part of the

DOE. Generally these reports come at request of Congress. The previous report was

dated September 8, 2008 and covered FY2007 data. That report was the source of this

chart

Proponents would point out the 854M for coal and the 1267M for nuclear, while

opponents would point out the 23.37/mwh for wind. While the subsidies in absolute

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dollar amounts were larger for coal and nuclear, those subsidies produced much more

electricity than wind’s.

In July 2011 the EIA released an updated report [backup link], covering FY2010.

Given the Obama administrations support of renewable energy, it should come as no

surprise that the subsidies to renewable technologies have increased a great deal. Since

wind is a large part of the renewable pie, wind’s numbers have increased apace. They’ve

increased to the point where even in absolute dollars the subsidies for wind now surpass

all the traditional technologies. Here’s the chart for all types of energy sources:

27

If we look at just the electricity-generation sector, the amount paid out to wind energy

becomes even more striking:

But despite the amount of money spent upon wind and solar these technologies produce

only a tiny fraction of all our energy.

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Note that the 2008 report has a column that showed the subsidies per mwh produced,

while the 2011 report does not. Fortunately, the previous two tables provide us with the

information needed to figure the numbers out for ourselves. Here’s the results (We

used table 4, page 13 of the 2011 report to get more accurate numbers for the re-

newables).

We hear so much about extravagant CEO pay in the media these days. The total CEO

pay for the 500 largest US companies on the S&P 500 is $5 billion dollars, which is less

than half the $6 billion dollars in US subsidies given to wind and solar and the

additional $6 billion for biofuels.

The difference is purchasing an S&P product or service is voluntary, yet no one would

be foolish enough to build a wind turbine or solar farm or use biofuels. So the

government wastes our money forcing us to purchase these “green” products.

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Safety of LFTR

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

The performance of nuclear power over 50 years has been excellent, despite three

serious civilian nuclear-power accidents – Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl, plus

Fukushima (so far, of intermediate severity – www.iaea.org) still developing in Japan.

Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl resulted from training and operational errors.

Fukushima derives from even more serious mismanagement and planning errors that

ignored the dual impacts of a large earthquake combined with a tsunami, despite

historical precedent. Yet, as we hear all too often, coal, gas and oil extraction and

transport have far more frequent, lethal events because of their combustibility. An old

joke says: “You can find a coal plant with a Geiger counter, but not a nuclear plant” –

there’s a great deal of Uranium in coal exhaust and ash (plus various toxins).

Unregulated coal-fire emissions (Mercury, Lead, Radon, soot…)

Thorium, used as a fertile ‘fuel’, is safer than current LWR reactor cycles due to its

abundance, its low radioactivity and its ability to efficiently breed fissile fuel at the

lowest fissile mass – Uranium 233. U-233’s Thermal-Neutron fission cross section

(~90%) yields about 1/2 the probability (compared to U-235) of transmutation to

higher-mass Actinides, which is the realm where long-lived radioactive wastes present

expensive safety problems.

The modern concept of the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) uses uranium and

Thorium dissolved in fluoride salts of lithium and beryllium. These salts are chemically

stable, impervious to radiation damage, and non-corrosive to the vessels that contain

them. Because of their ability to tolerate heavy radiation, excellent temperature

properties, minimal fuel loading requirements (i.e., easy of continual refueling) and other

inherent factors, LFTR cores can be made much smaller than a typical light water

reactor (LWR). In fact, liquid salt reactors, and LFTRs specifically, are listed as an

unfunded part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Generation-4 Nuclear Solution Plan.

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LFTRs are designed to take advantage of the physics of the Thorium cycle for optimum

safety. The fluid in the core is not pressurized, thus eliminating the driving force of

radiation release in conventional approaches. The LFTR reactor cannot melt down

because of a runaway reaction or other nuclear reactivity accidents (such as at

Chernobyl), because any increase in the reactor's operating temperature results in a

reduction of reactor power, thus stabilizing the reactor without the need for human

intervention. Further, the reactor is designed with a salt plug drain in the bottom of the

core vessel. If the fluid gets too hot or for any other reason including power failures, the

plug naturally melts, and the fluid dumps into a passively cooled containment vessel

where decay heat is removed. This feature prevents any Three Mile Island-type

accidents or radiation releases due to accident or sabotage and provides a convenient

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means to shut down and restart the system quickly and easily.

Because nearly all of the Thorium is used up in an LFTR (versus only about 0.7% to 2%

of uranium mined for an LWR), the reactor achieves high energy production per metric

ton of fuel ore, on the order of 300 times the output of a typical uranium LWR. The

LFTR allows much higher operating temperatures than does a typical LWR therefore a

higher thermodynamic efficiency. The turbine system believed best suited for its

operation is a triple-reheat closed-cycle helium turbine system, which should convert

50% of the reactor heat into electricity compared to today's steam cycle (~25% to 33%).

This efficiency gain translates to about 4.11 million barrels of crude oil equivalent per

year more than that generated by a steam system. Capital costs are lower due to smaller

reactor & turbo-machinery size, low reactor pressures and minimal redundant safety

systems. The greater energy production capability of LFTRs means we estimate the

cost for electricity from a LFTR plant could be 25% to over 50% less than that from a

LWR.

LFTRs would produce far less waste along their entire process chain, from ore

extraction to nuclear waste storage, than LWRs. A LFTR power plant would generate

4,000 times less mining waste (solids and liquids of similar character to those in

uranium mining) and would generate 1,000 to 10,000 times less nuclear waste than an

LWR. Additionally, because LFTR burns all of its nuclear fuel, the majority of the

waste products (83%) are safe within 10 years, and the remaining waste products (17%)

need to be stored in geological isolation for only about 300 years (compared to 10,000

years or more for LWR waste). Additionally, the LFTR can be used to "burn down"

waste from an LWR (nearly the entirety of the United States' nuclear waste stockpile)

into the standard waste products of an LFTR, so long-term storage of nuclear waste

would no longer be needed.

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Proliferation Resistance

For all practical purposes, U233 is worthless as a nuclear weapons material, and indeed

no nation has attempted to weaponize U233 because of the abundance of difficulties.

U233 is considered an unsuitable choice for nuclear weapons material because whenever

U233 is generated, uranium-232 (U232) contamination inevitably occurs. U232 rapidly

decays into other elements, including thallium-208, a hard-gamma-ray emitter whose

signature is easily detectable. The hard gamma rays from thallium-208 cause ionization

of materials destroying the explosives and electronics of a nuclear weapon, and heavy

lead shielding is required to protect personnel assembling the warhead. It is possible to

generate U233 with little U232 contamination using specialized reactors (such as at the

Hanford Site), but not with an LFTR. Any attempt to increase production of U233 in an

LFTR reactor will generate U232 contamination and any attempt to steal quantities of

U233 results in the reactor shutting down.

The Corrosion Factor

Finding materials with the required high-temperature strength and chemical

compatibility with the fluoride salts is part of the quest to build the Liquid Fluoride

Thorium Reactors. To get the required combination of high temperature and corrosion

resistance required for LFTRs operating at ~800 degrees C, cladding or coatings of

materials can accomplish things that single alloy solutions cannot.

By cladding an ASME Type III structural alloy (Alloy 617 or Alloy 800H) with a

corrosion resistant layer (Hastelloy-N modified with 1.5% Niobium) you can provide the

high temperature strength and corrosion resistance that advanced high performance

LFTRs will require.

There are ongoing materials testing experiments underway at molten salt corrosion

test loops at ORNL, University of Nevada, and University of Wisconsin. There are also

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molten salt material compatibility/lifetime experiments taking place currently in the

Czech Republic and Russia as part of the GIF Gen-4 MSR effort. There are,

unfortunately, no operating Molten Salt Reactors so it is not easy to measure

simultaneously all of the aspects of corrosion and neutron damage in one test station to

use to project material lifetimes.

At the time that DOE secretary Dr. Chu made his “corrosion” statement to the Senate

in response to Senator Jean Shaheen’s question, about the technical hurdles that need to

be overcome to realize LFTR, Charles Barton wrote a fine blog article in response

entitled “Secretary Chu’s answer and the facts”

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/05/secretary-chus-answer-and-facts.html

Many LFTR advocates thereafter wrote Dr. Chu letters to try to update his personal

knowledge base on advances on LFTR materials. It is not clear what proof decision

makers will accept to allow LFTR designers to get the corrosion monkey off of their

backs and be allowed to build a modern LFTR prototype. Many researchers feel that all

of the LFTR corrosion and materials issues now have been responsibly answered

permitting safe construction of low temperature [704 degrees C exit salt temperature]

single fluid LFTR prototypes). The advances in cladded materials will permit safe

construction of more advanced higher temperature and higher efficiency LFTRs.

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LFTR Revenue Streams

LFTR not only creates electricity but also creates a massive amount of waste heat as a

byproduct. This waste heat can be a source of additional revenue that can equal or

surpass that of LFTRs primary function of creating electricity.

Electricity

While it is not known exactly how economically LFTR will be able to produce

electricity, it is a safe estimate that it will at least outperform traditional Uranium

fuelled LWR reactors by at least a 2:1 margin. This means that the cost to the consumer

is expected to reduce their electrical costs by a minimum of 50% but a 75% to 80%

reduction is possible.

Desalinization of Water

The high heat output of LFTR makes it perfect for locating it near communities near

the ocean. LFTR can use its heat to produce an abundance of fresh potable drinking

water.

LFTR produces revenue streams of: Water sales, Brine Sales, and Salt Sales.

Waste Water Sterilization

Instead of dumping treated sewage back into the water source we use for drinking, we

can opt for another process. Biodigesters need warm water to produce Natural Gas from

rotting organic waste, especially in the winter. By combining organic waste streams

common to a community (waste food, animal manure, silage, grass clippings,

leaves…etc..etc.) with the sewage of a community in a process called co-digestion, we

can produce a high quantity of Natural Gas as a transportation fuel, fertilizer for

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agricultural applications, and treated water than can be steam sterilized and returned to

the land for use in agricultural irrigation. This allows the water normally flushed into

our lakes and streams to be filtered naturally in the eco-system. LFTR produces

revenue streams of: Natural Gas production, Fertilizer Sales, Waste disposal fees,

Agricultural Gray Water Sales, Waste Water treatment plant fees.

Hydrothermal Residential Heating Utility

Ground source heat pumps (aka Geothermal Heat Pumps) "extract stored solar energy

from the ground to run a home's central heating, and can cost as the same as a forced air

Natural Gas furnace minus the expensive buried thermal loops or water wells that

provide source heat. Widely used in the rural US, these heat pumps produce three or

four units of heat for every unit of electricity they use, and can be reversed to provide

cooling.

A Geothermal Heat Pump is a very efficient method of heating and cooling a home.

Using up to 75% less energy than traditional oil/gas heat and electric air conditioning

methods.

But, instead of using the Earth’s stored solar heat what about using the solar heat

stored in the municipal water system and amplify that heat with the waste heat from a

LFTR? As early as 1999 DeMarco Energy miser systems have been using the heat

stored in municipal water supplies to heat homes, businesses, and even Army and Naval

bases. Raising the temperature of the municipal water supply in the winter by 10 to 20

degrees Fahrenheit will allow a much more economical use of these geothermal heat

pumps which will minimize any electrical resistance heating in the heat pumps.

A municipal hydrothermal utility will allow geothermal heat pumps to run at maximum

efficiency to reduce heating costs over Natural Gas by 70%. Charging a connect fee and

an amount equal to 20% of the savings gives LFTR another income stream and allows

consumers to see their heating bills cut in half.

LFTR revenue stream of: Connection fees, Hydrothermal Utility fees

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Pharmaceuticals

LFTR produces valuable short lived and long lived radioisotopes used in various

diagnostic medical procedures and in advanced cancer treatments. LFTR revenue

stream of: Nuclear Pharmacy.

Municipal Waste Disposal

Municipal waste holds a lot of stored energy and land filling this energy makes no sense

if it is economical to harvest. The cheap price of electricity that LFTR produces makes

it economical to use the process “anoxic plasma torch gasification” to reduce trash and

sewage sludge to slag and ash and gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel. The slag can be used

in road construction or be formed into bricks and used in construction or can be ground

into a powder and used as an industrial abrasive. The ash can be used as an additive to

strengthen concrete. LFTR revenue stream of: Municipal Waste Tipping Fees,

Gasoline sales, Diesel fuel sales, Jet Fuel sales, Construction Aggregate Sales, Industrial

Abrasive sales.

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Many can see very quickly that LFTR has many more revenue streams if it is mass-

produced in a size suitable for municipalities or lesser-populated counties. Placing

25MW modules at a garbage disposal site allows for easy access to trash to be

converted to fuels and provides an industrial setting for the sale of construction

aggregate and ash that could be used in the surrounding communities. A bio-digester on

the grounds of the garbage disposal site allows for the transformation of organic waste

into Natural Gas and compliments a food waste recycling program very well and, again,

provides an industrial setting for the sales of fertilizer and gray water for agricultural

irrigation. By routing the Municipal water supply through the facility LFTR wast heat

can heat the water supply in the winter to provide a very safe hydrothermal utility.

The LFTR/Municipal waste facility very quickly can become a major industrial

producer in the area while reducing costs that improve the quality of life for citizens and

make our products cheaper to produce and more competitive in the world marketplace.

While small modular LFTRs have multiple uses as municipal to county size reactors

their small size dictates the need for multiple income streams for LFTRs to be

economically feasible on such a small scale. There are industrial applications where

small modular LFTR reactors can be economically feasible with a single dedicated

income stream.

Shale Oil and Tar Sands

Shale Oil and Tar Sands are of strategic importance to the future of the American and

world economies. Say what you want about fossil fuels, but….our economy is built upon

the internal combustion engine and no one policy by the government will change that

overnight. There are significant technological hurdles to overcome to eliminate the

need for fossil fuels and unless there are significant technological advances in science it

will take at least 100 years to phase out the need for fossil fuels. With that being said,

LFTR can greatly accelerate the process to a cleaner environment by the reduction and

alternative use of fossil fuels. A change in America’s policy on Thorium and America’s

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development of commercial LFTRs are tools that are needed to drive technological

research and innovation.

It is estimated to cost about $9 trillion to replace all electrical generation in America

with Thorium based power plants.

The math? There are approximately 3,033 counties in the United States with an

average population of about 100,000 people per county. Each 25 MW reactor would

cost about $200 million to produce. With a need of 12 reactors per county that is 36,400

reactors needed over the next 10 years (10 per day, think an assembly line 10 times

larger than the Boeing jet assembly line). Reactors that provide half price electricity,

half price heating, half price cooling, half price transportation fuel, and greatly reduced

waste costs by recycling the energy stored in waste. This means a lot more money in

the hands of Americans which will result in our economy being supercharged over the

next 100 years by reducing the stress of debt and high costs upon the American people.

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The Plan

Ideally, since we are in an energy emergency, one that will only get worse with time,

advocates hold out hope for a Manhattan Project like space race centered upon LFTR

development. Such government resources and funds spent on this project would greatly

accelerate the commercialization of LFTR technology.

A Manhattan like project is not very realistic unless something were to happen to

worsen our energy markets and bring the weight of public opinion to bear upon

whichever party is in power at the time.

Step One: Influence the NRC or Congress or both to allow a private company

such as Flibe energy a permit to build a small demonstration reactor based upon

the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reactor with more modern materials. This

demonstration reactor would be used to test materials for each succeeding

reactor. Year 1

Step Two: Build a small commercial sized reactor that could be used to retrofit a

traditional coal steam turbine plant. This will prove the safety of the reactor

Years 2, 3, 4

Step Three: Develop a 1GW Brayton Gas Turbine that can be mated to the

LFTR to produce power for a large municipality. Years 5, 6, 7, 8

Step Four: Develop a small modular 25MW reactor and turbine that can be mass

produced on an assembly line. Build factory and adopt safety standards for the

mass production of LFTR reactors. Years 9, 10, 11, 12

Step Five: Develop additional modules that increase LFTR’s revenue stream.

Years 13,14,15

And Beyond: the development of a LFTR that extracts Carbon Dioxide from the

atmosphere and produces dimethyl ether (an ultra-clean substitute for diesel

fuel).

This is a 15 year plan to develop LFTR. LFTR technology is a proven technology and

we believe with proper funding and motivation LFTR could safely be commercialized

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within 5 to 7 years. A 5 to 7 year development path could only happen with

Congressional and government cooperation with private industry. An even shorter

development path may be possible if this project were to be militarized. LFTR has many

potential military applications, not the least of which, is as a power source for naval rail

guns that would be able to act as a “Star Wars” like shield to shoot down inter-

continental ballistic missiles.

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Potential Customers

Utility Providers

County Governments Large Municipalities

Waste Management Companies Industrial Smelters

Steel Foundries Oil Shale and Oil Sands Companies

Nuclear Power Plant Waste Remediators

Passenger and Cargo ships Military Sales

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Economic Benefits

A stretch of largely vacant federal lands in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado holds more

recoverable oil than all the rest of the world put together. The Green River Formation

— an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of

Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — contains the world's largest deposits of oil shale.

USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] estimates that the Green River Formation contains

about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable with current

technology and economic conditions.

The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60

percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint

of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is

an amount about equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves. Shell’s in situ process to

harvest oil from shale formations is ready built for LFTR and the potential to harvest

100% of this valuable American asset. The in situ process uses heat and supercritical

CO2 to be pumped into the shale formation while being bombarded with high radio

frequency waves (think microwaving the ground). This releases the shale oil in a

minimal amount of time with minimal costs. Typically formations need to be heated for

up to 7 years and the in situ process could possibly reduce this time to less than a year.

LFTR provides the technology to create all the needed energies needed for the in situ

process far more economically than any other technology and this means all of the

Green River Shale oil would be potentially harvestable.

As you can imagine having the technology to develop this vast energy resource will lead

to a number of important socioeconomic benefits including the creation of jobs,

increases in wealth and increases in tax and royalty payments for federal and state

governments.

This is good news for America. Cheap, abundant oil produced within the nation will

produce high-paying jobs in the oil and gas industry, reduce the country's balance of

payments, and provide American consumers and industry with more money to spend

and to expand. The federal government is in a unique position to influence the

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development of oil shale because nearly three-quarters of the oil shale within the Green

River Formation lies beneath federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior’s

Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Developing oil shale and providing power for oil shale operations and other activities

will require large amounts of power water and could have significant impacts on the

quality and quantity of surface and groundwater resources if not done properly.

The aggressive recovery of these reserves could do more than simply provide the

economy with large amounts of cheap oil and stimulate the oil and gas industry. Because

this oil is largely on federal lands, an enormous amount of federal revenue could be

generated through lease options and royalty payments without raising tax rates at all.

How much? The standard royalty payment in the oil and gas business is “one-eighth of

production free and clear of costs” or 12.5 percent of the value of the oil extracted.

Assuming that the 3-trillion barrel figure is accurate and that the price of oil remains in

the neighborhood of $100 per barrel, then the federal non-tax revenue from royalties

alone could be as high as $37.5 trillion. However, that figure is no doubt an

overestimate of revenue. As more oil is extracted, the price of oil will drop, and hence it

will not be economically feasible to recover more of the oil at that point.

But even if only 30 percent of those royalty revenues flowed into the U.S. Treasury, that

would be enough to pay off the entire national debt without raising tax rates or cutting

federal spending. Moreover, state taxes on oil and gas produced would enable state

governments to keep tax rates low without affecting government operations.

The high-paying oil field jobs produced would also create more taxable income not only

among those directly working in the oil industry but also in the service businesses of

those states in which the oil workers lived. The oil-field workers would also pay more

federal income taxes as their incomes rose, and thus the need for federal programs to

assist the poor would decline.

The limitations on the creation of wealth in human society seem to be only those

imposed by government. If federal overregulation does not stand in the way, oil and gas

extractable in North Dakota and in the Green River Formation of the Rocky Mountains

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may solve a whole slew of social and economic problems caused by federal deficit

spending.

But what if we did not take the traditional approach of developing Shale oil?

What if, instead, we made a deal with our creditors?

China, India, and Japan own most of America’s debt and they also happen to be starved

for oil that would allow their country to greatly expand economically. America could

make a deal right now to retire all of our debt and sell future oil production from this

reserve to these countries and improve America’s position in the world.

There are 3 trillion barrels of oil in the reserve and to flood the market with a massive

amount of oil would provide a boom bust cycle that would lead to not benefiting

America. Let’s keep the oil market within America a free market but let’s put price

controls on oil exported from America. Just how OPEC places controls on production to

manipulate pricing so they can maximize their profit, America can play the same game

but up the ante. Because America has so much oil and that oil is owned by a single

source, America has a monopoly that can dictate to the market because the market

cannot be oversaturated with product.

If America sets an export price at a minimum of $80/barrel for the next 50

years……ask yourself what will happen?

Will other countries try to undercut America or will they follow suit and offer their oil

at $80/barrel?

While some countries will try to undercut the $80/barrel mark other countries will

follow suit to maximize profits. Unlike OPEC, America will not have to manipulate

production to maintain pricing and this pricing scheme effectively halts all futures

trading by providing stability to the world markets.

Setting a fairly high price per barrel benefits America at the expense of her creditors

reverses the flow of the vast amount of wealth that leaves America to a flow of wealth

that benefits America.

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Businesses all over the world will be able to better plan based upon stable energy costs

and America’s massive influx of oil to the world market would not adversely affect other

countries oil industries. This scheme allows America’s oil to be spread through out the

world providing stability while not producing an oversupply of product and maximizes

the wealth potential to Americans.

At $80/barrel times 3 trillion barrels is $240 trillion. Minus the recovery cost to that is

estimated at $60 trillion. This leaves a net of $180 Trillion. If America gives industry

voluntary prison labor (for shorter sentences) then it has a potential work force pool of

more than 1 million from which to draw which will literally work for pennies on the

dollar and that would significantly lessen extraction costs.

At $180 Trillion, with America supplying the labor through her penal system a 60/40

split with Industry should be fair. Industry improves its coffers to the tune of $70

Trillion and America gets $108 trillion to pay off $15 trillion in debt, $70 trillion in

unfunded liabilities, leaving $23 trillion.

This $23 trillion can be used to help pay for counties and communities to convert to

Thorium based electricity ($9 trillion) and to establish programs to convert all vehicles

in America to natural gas or to coal derived liquid fuels ($14 trillion).

This scheme allows America to maximize its wealth potential while providing the

greatest benefit to our environment and economy. At $80/barrel for oil, CNG

Compressed Natural Gas can sell retail at half the price of gasoline and coal derived

diesel fuel can sell for about 25% less than traditional diesel. The plan is simple.

America keeps and uses her clean and cheap fuel and sells her dirty and expensive fuels,

which will maintain America’s competitive advantage over the rest of the world for

years to come.

A Thorium Based Economy’s benefits:

Provides a pathway toward indefinite energy sustainability with minimal

environmental impact (far less than current alternative energy efforts).

No more funds flowing into the hands of terrorist sponsoring countries through

oil dollars.

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Less money needed to spend on defense of our nation. America no longer has to

do business with dictators.

Half price electricity, half price heating and cooling, half price transportation

fuel, half price waste removal, means more money in American taxpayer’s hands

which means more liberty and more people enjoying the pursuit of happiness.

More jobs and prosperity for Americans and the world.

Far less CO2 in the atmosphere.

Greater immediate waste recycling that maximizes the use of harvested assets

from our environment.

Path to minimize the consumption of fossil fuels.

Much more stable and efficient energy grid and promotion of a better use of coal

and natural gas.

Better and cheaper healthcare through the use of cheap medical radio isotopes.