Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ou_LGjjmFI
http://energyfromthorium.com/2012/02/20/support-gordon/

A campaign to create a new documentary on Thorium LFTR technology. As far as I can see this is one of the very few, and easily the most promising, technologies which can really save our asses as far as climate change goes.

Watch the video, the guy's pretty goony but has a decent sense of humour and isn't terrible at editing - see the 2011 Thorium remix (but remember he wants to do the new one with an actual budget"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

Office Thug posted:

China is a country to pay attention to in terms of their energy situation. More than 80% of their capacity comes from coal, and with their current rate of growth they will not be able to keep relying on fossil fuels up to the end of this century. They've been exploring a large variety of alternatives like renewables and nuclear to deal with the massive problem before it causes their society and all their progress to freeze up.

......

Hey Office Thug, was going to PM you but no go. I know you wrote the OP for the Energy Tech thread, I'd like to ask you to write a Thorium LFTR OP?
Reason I ask is that I don't have time (Finals coming up), you've already written a large section of an OP on Thorium in the Energy Tech thread, and I think goons would be interested (and might donate to) the above developments in the Thorium campaign. It would be incredibly cool of you, and might help to make a big difference if you did it right (I'm thinking thread title of 'A Solution for Climate Change - Donate' or some similar hyperbole thing to get peoples' attentions...)

e: or just anyone who has the time. I think Thorium deserves its own GBS thread to try and help drum up support for their campaign.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2012 21:27

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:09

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Corrupt Politician posted:

I'm of the opinion that regardless of the environmental consequences, nearly every barrel of economically-recoverable oil in the world will eventually be drilled, refined, and burned. Without some miracle tech that can let us live our current lifestyle without fossil fuels, people will simply not be willing to give it up.

http://energyfromthorium.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html (ignore the bit about generating fuels, the rest is pretty good though nowhere near as good as the full explanation:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

I'm very interested in talking to someone (anyone, in this thread or anywhere else) who can really make a good critique of the LFTR concept and design. At the moment all the evidence seems to point to it being an incredible technology which could save the world, but I am naturally sceptical. This is balanced of course by the fact that China's started investing in LFTR development.

Seriously, anyone who can even just play devil's advocate on this subject, it would be really great, as I'm hoping to start giving talks about it around my uni in a few months.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2012 20:10

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Apologies if this has already been posted:
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/3903791

Does this bare any possible relation to LFTR? I haven't seen it as news on any of the Thorium advocacy sites. What sorts of reactors is it aimed at?

# ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:29

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Office Thug posted:

LFTR companies in North America are pitching the idea at the military right now, which could use cheap, highly efficient, and ridiculously safe reactors as heat sources for synthetic fuel production in aggressive areas. The LFTR has great potential as a battery style reactor that can be deployed for an elongated period of time before the core mix needs reprocessing/refueling. The thing is that the military bypasses the NRC when it comes to national defense matters and what LFTR research and development needs the most right now is approval for prototype reactors. Getting military approval would be the best bet for building a prototype to iron out the bugs left over from Oakridge's original research, and subsequently up-scaling to working small modular reactors.

Definitely - after all, that's where the funding for the initial Liquid Fluoride reactor experiment came from.
I'm really interested in hearing about what problems Oakridge and Weinberg encountered back when they were researching this tech. It's now easy to find clear sources for the positive sides to LFTR, mainly in the form of Kirk Sorenson's talks. But I've only once seen Sorenson talk about the engineering challenges that we face in developing commercial LFTRs, and that was very very briefly at the end of the Google Tech Talk 'why LFTR didn't happen'.
He mentioned that salts can be corrosive and so the reactor materials would have to be adapted to this. That was one of my first thoughts when trying to think of downsides to LFTR; do we know of whether Weinberg encountered such problems, or any other significant ones, and whether decent solutions were discovered and implemented during the 5-year Molten Salt Reactor Experiment?

Fake edit: I've been trying to find the AEC report WASH-222, which was the AEC's paper that ignored the safety advantages of molten salt reactors and pointed to a couple of problems they found in the design. Anyone know where to get ahold of a copy?

# ¿ Mar 14, 2012 20:17

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Office Thug posted:

Here it is: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/WASH-1222.pdf

Kirk also keeps a metric fuckton of documentation on his blog about nuclear reactors in general, ORNL research, and LFTR reports and research: http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/

A lot of the problems are just optimization issues to conform with today's technology it seems like, especially in terms of chemical reprocessing. Computer-based simulations will only get you so far. The answer to the big question of "What are the issues with this reactor?" is basically we won't know until we build a new test reactor using today's technology. For example, the original MSRE had plumbing issues specifically in getting pumps and things to survive in the harsh high temperature and reductive corrosive environments they were being exposed to. We should have far better technology for things like high temperature industrial chemical plumbing today, some of it probably a necessity from the uranium enrichment industry which uses delightful chemicals like chlorine trifluoride. The corrosive nature of the salt wasn't anywhere as big of a problem to the reactor structure itself as most critiques point out, given that Weinberg had commissioned a nickel-based alloy specifically designed to hold fluoride salts at high temperatures called Hastelloy-N. This alloy also thrived in a heavy neutron radiation environment and was found to have become structurally stronger at the end of the reactor's operation lifetime, which was unexpected.

Fantastically informative post, thanks so much.

So, regarding the Hastelloy-N, the above report says there was some cracking discovered in the post-experiment examination of the vessel and piping, due to tellurium reacting with the material. They also say that the alloy would not do well in a highly neutron dense environment, although they note that there was some improvement being made there. Basically, is what you say in your post based on later findings, or is WASH-1222 simply incorrect maybe?

e: perhaps it doesn't matter, it's so hard to judge as we've come incredibly far in materials science since then. Still, I imagine that fabricating durable materials for use with molten salts is always going to be a hurdle with this design.

El Grillo fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Mar 15, 2012

# ¿ Mar 15, 2012 21:29

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Office Thug posted:

The report isn't wrong but it ignores the research team's custom alloy compositions based on Hastelloy-N, some of which performed very well: moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-TM-3063.pdf The problems are also nowhere near as big a deal as the WASH report is making them out to be. The report was really just going to dismiss the technology from the get-go no matter what, as can be seen in their final word in the conclusion:

The MSBR never had a chance from the beginning. As for radiation, they're correct for regular heats of Hastelloy-N, but Oakridge researchers conducted tests on their own lab-made heats and found one in particular that performed better in neutron radiation conditions than a non-irradiated reference sample of the same heat.

Very cool. Yes, it's great to read the document actually and see for yourself just how biased the Commission was at that stage. Especially the bit where they decide that they can't quantify the potential safety improvements. Unbelievable.
Wish I had time right now to make a GBS thread about it all - it's actually quite a fascinating story which Goons would certainly be interested in, and it gives me a strange sense when I think about it of what might have been. If the US had adopted this tech in the 60s, the world could be a very, very different place right now.
Not only that, but there's now a new Thorium Petition going, along with Gordon MacDowell's Thorium Remix KickStarter project, which is pulling in a lot of donations and a load of new contributors.

I'm thinking I might do one after the weekend (I'm away till Monday). If there's anything you want to add/suggest/etc. then let me know, would be fantastic to have your help. SA's a great platform to send things like this viral, if the platform is convincing enough.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2012 11:47

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:09

El Grillo: Jan 3, 2008; Fun Shoe

Just had this linked to me on FB: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4443252.ece
Thought it might provide some amusing fuel for the thread. I hadn't heard of Ridley somehow, been reading up on him. What a character!

Don't have Times access but here's a quote I found:

quote:

Our lives are vastly improved by oil and coal but this is wilfully ignored by those pressing for institutions to disinvest
Divestment won�t work, is unethical, hypocritical, aimed at the wrong target and based on flawed premises.
Institutions and pension funds are under pressure to dump their investments in fossil-fuel companies. The divestment movement began in America, jumped the Atlantic and has become the cause c�l�bre of the retiring editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger. The idea is that if we do not �leave it in the ground�, the burning of all that carbon will fry the climate.
Some are resisting: the Wellcome Trust has politely declined to divest, saying it thinks it is better to keep the shares so it can lean on company executives to decarbonise; the University of Edinburgh unexpectedly voted last week not to divest, using a similar argument; and Boris Johnson has just rejected a motion by the London Assembly to divest its pension funds of fossil-fuel shares. The Church of England has cunningly confined its divestment to �thermal coal� and Canadian oil sands companies, getting good publicity but not having to sell many shares.
Of course, divestment represents an admission that fossil fuels are not going to run out, as was commonly believed until the shale bonanza began. �
It�s all mad. Divestment won�t work, is unethical, hypocritical, aimed at the wrong target and based on flawed premises.
First, there is a buyer for every seller. �.
Second, if the world went cold turkey on fossil fuels the people who would suffer most would be the poor. Divestment is not an ethical thing to do; it�s a harsh, cold-hearted decision. It says: sorry, poor people (and rainforests), we have to make you suffer today so that our great grandchildren can be safe from a risk of rising sea levels in the event that no other energy technology comes along.
Third, it is hypocritical because the divesters continue to use electric light and gas heating, and to travel by car and plane. That�s because there is no alternative to fossil fuels on the scale we use them. �
Fourth, the campaign will have little effect on the oil industry. Exxon is the 11th biggest oil company in the world in terms of reserves; Shell 19th and BP 20th. All but one (Lukoil) of the rest of the top 20 belong to governments: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and so on. These regimes will pay no attention to students occupying senior common rooms in London. �
Finally, the whole argument is based on a flawed premise. The divesters argue that if we are to have a decent chance of limiting any temperature rise to 2 C from pre-industrial levels, then we must burn less carbon in the future than we have burnt in the past two centuries. � Note that they are therefore assuming a rapid acceleration of the rate of warming, whereas in fact it has slowed down in the past two decades. That�s one flaw.
A bigger one is this. The IPCC models assume high sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide. With a more realistic estimate of climate sensitivity taken from a raft of recent high-quality, observation based studies, and still assuming fossil fuel burning at 10gtc a year, we would probably not hit the 2 C threshold for more than 100 years (which is bang in line with the rate of warming over the past 60 years).

# ¿ May 20, 2015 12:57

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