Today's the day. Today is the first of two days for the TEAC5 meeting in Chicago, Illinois. I thought of going at the last minute, but decided to stay home for health reasons.
Now, it may be premature, but I think this is a solution for our energy problems. The LFTR, that is. But the main problem is overcoming resistance to this idea.
I had a short sales career. One of the things you need to learn in order to be a good salesman is the ability to overcome objections. I didn't stick around long enough to learn how, but at least I know about it. For instance, you might have a recollection of having a salesman ask you something like "what would it take"? He's trying to learn what your objections are so that he can convince you to buy what he's selling.
So, I'm trying to sell you on the LFTR.
What would be an objection to LFTRs? Well, there are probably a lot of them. Let's try to anticipate a few, shall we? The first one would be waste. That has been covered in the videos pretty adequately, I think. Just one more thing you might want to consider. That's existing waste from existing nuclear reactors. The LFTR can help with that. If you don't do anything else with the LFTR, you could do that. You can mitigate the existing nuclear waste problem. How? A LFTR is going to need a neutron source to get it started. The waste can provide that. It could be the kindling wood, so to speak, to start up the LFTR. Just keep feeding it the waste little by little and it is all burned up eventually. You are left with a waste stream, sure, but it is much more manageable. And as I mentioned, the LFTR guys have the rest figured out.
Three hundred years and the waste will be safe. That's a huge improvement over what we've already got, isn't it?
The next big objection would be proliferation risks. Once again, the LFTR guys have that figured out. The LFTR is not a practical way to make the bomb. Now, let's suppose you put the LFTR on an existing nuclear site. That site is already being guarded with gates, guns, and guards. Now the LFTR has but a small footprint. You can put a 100 MW LFTR on an 18 wheeler. So, it would be relatively easy to just bring one to an existing facility and have it guarded as well as the rest of the existing stuff is guarded. In the meantime, you can use that LFTR to burn up the wastes that already exist. In the end, your existing proliferation risk has been burn up and the remaining LFTR poses no threat. You can do all this without entailing any greater risk than what already exists.
But what about meltdowns? The LFTR is walk away safe. It has passive safety features. It will shut itself down automatically if something goes wrong. It regulates itself. There is no possibility of a runaway reaction. Got it covered, just trust me on that.
But the LFTR doesn't even exist yet. But it was proven in the lab over 40 years ago. Perhaps the time hadn't come for it yet. But the time has come today. There's a crying need for something like this right now and it could exist within five years.
Still not convinced? Well, what about cost? Kirk Sorensen estimates that a prototype can be built for about as much as Solyndra's cost. If the government can waste money on Solyndra, why not try this?
But you don't have to rely on government. Plenty of opportunity to make money in an environmentally friendly way. For not only can the LFTR burn up nuclear waste, it can produce with its nuclear energy vast quantities of environmentally friendly drop in fuels from biological sources. Thus, we can clean up our air from the threat of excessive carbon dioxide build up. How?
That part I got covered on this blog. One example is to grow seaweed in the Gulf. Harvest it. Bring it to the South Texas Nuclear Project. Use the LFTR to pyrolyze it into biochar and drop in biofuels. Nothing new in the way of technology would have to be developed. There's already a Canadian company which makes drop in biofuels from biological sources. In the meantime, while you are burning up the nuclear wastes, you are also cleaning up the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
What's not to like? But it gets even better. With the biochar you've just produced, you can improve soils and sequester carbon for centuries. You could draw down the carbon buildup in the atmosphere.
You could even produce clean water from seawater using this process. It doesn't take much energy by the process I've written about here on this blog. Just use the relatively hot water that is no longer steam, and use it for a low energy process that can produce potable water from seawater. I covered that on this blog, too.
You could also produce a hydrogen source for fuel cells. I've covered that on this blog too. See the series about electric cars on the left sidebar, for more information.
The possibilities go on and on. There's simply no reason why this can't be done. There's no reason why it shouldn't be done. Try to think of one. Chances are, the LFTR guys have got it covered.
For more information about LFTR's, just click on the category label at the bottom of this post.
Keep tuned for more information in the future.
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