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charlie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 01:43 AM
Original message
Thorium-fluoride reactor advocacy in 16 blistering minutes
This is a mashup of Google Talks by advocates, cut to a rapidfire pace. It's not comprehensive or balanced, drawbacks are barely touched upon, but if you want an overview of advantages and a bit of history on how we got locked into current nuclear technology, it's a fun ride:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk
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eppur_se_muova Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 01:10 PM
Response to Original message
1. Thanks, but better posted in Environment/Energy.
Both pro- and anti-nuclear presences strong there.
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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 06:38 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. More anti. It would ust get trashed. Thanks for sharing the video.
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 09:29 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Garwin: Letter to the Editor of The New York Times re Radkowsky Thorium Reactor
http://www.fas.org/rlg/980602-rlg-nyt.htm

Letter to the Editor of The New York Times re Radkowsky Thorium Reactor--
not published.

Richard L. Garwin
Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow
for Science and Technology
Council on Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street
New York, NY 10021
(914) 945-2555
FAX: (914) 945-4419
INTERNET: RLG2 at watson.ibm.com


June 2, 1998
(Via Email to letters at nytimes.com)


Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Editor:

"Finding a Formula to Light the World but Guard the Bomb"
(June 2) quotes the Radkowsky Thorium Power Corp. and
commentators as stating that plutonium from the Radkowsky
reactor core "could never produce more than a fizzle" if
made into a nuclear weapon. At an explosive yield of 1000
or 2000 tons of explosive, compared with two tons of
explosive in a truck bomb, and augmented by the nuclear
radiation, a fizzle would level many city blocks. But the
company and the commentators are wrong; this material can
make a reliable bomb.

In January 1997 the U.S. Department of Energy stated of
reactor-grade plutonium, "Proliferating states using designs
of intermediate sophistication could produce weapons with
assured yields substantially higher than the kiloton-range
possible with a simple, first-generation nuclear device."
According to a 1997 publication by the Radkowsky company,
plutonium extracted from the Radkowsky "seed" pellets would
require about only 10% more material than normal
reactor-grade plutonium to make a weapon and, that
publication even states "A more sophisticated country might
be able to design a weapon whose yield would be much less
degraded by a spontaneous fission source."

The heat from the plutonium core of such a weapon would
amount to about 200 watts; a 200-watt light bulb would start
a fire if buried under a pillow. But the problems of making
a nuclear weapon with this plutonium containing 6% of the
heat-generating isotope of plutonium (Pu-238) are not
different in kind from those that must be met in making a
weapon from military plutonium. Because of its utility in
weapons, plutonium up to 80% Pu-238 must be protected in the
same fashion as military plutonium, according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency standards.

As emphasized in a February 1998 study by the Royal Society
of Britain, "The surest anti-proliferation measure is to
stop reprocessing spent fuel and to reduce the quantity of
separated plutonium in store." This would apply also to the
Radkowsky approach.

Sincerely yours,



Richard L. Garwin
The writer is Senior Fellow for Science and Technology
at the Council on Foreign Relations and was an author of a
1995 National Academy of Sciences Report on Reactor Options
for Disposition of Excess Weapon Plutonium


RLG:jah:X153ENYT:060298ENYT


Note to the Editor: I would be glad to send you by FAX the
Radkowsky company publication in SCIENCE & GLOBAL SECURITY,
1997, vol. 6, pp. 265-290 (or at least the relevant pages)
showing the relative critical masses that Radkowsky
estimates for weapon-grade plutonium, normal reactor grade
plutonium, the Radkowsky thorium reactor seed plutonium.
These are 4.3 kilograms, 5.5 kilograms, and 5.9 kilograms.
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 09:45 PM
Response to Reply #2
4. MIT: The Future of Nuclear Power
On page 5, they highlighted their "most important recommendation":
Our analysis leads to a significant conclusion: The once-through fuel cycle best
meets the criteria of low costs and proliferation resistance.
Closed fuel cycles
may have an advantage from the point of view of long-term waste disposal
and, if it ever becomes relevant, resource extension. But closed fuel cycles will
be more expensive than once-through cycles, until ore resources become very
scarce. This is unlikely to happen, even with significant growth in nuclear
power, until at least the second half of this century, and probably considerably
later still. Thus our most important recommendation is:
For the next decades, government and industry in the U.S. and elsewhere
should give priority to the deployment of the once-through fuel cycle,
rather than the development of more expensive closed fuel cycle
technology involving reprocessing and new advanced thermal or fast
reactor technologies.


On page 75, they highlighted their "paramount recommendation":
This analysis leads us to a conclusion of great significance: the open, once-through
fuel cycle best meets the criteria of economic attractiveness and proliferation resistance.
Closed fuel cycles may have an advantage from the point of view of long-term
waste disposal and, if it ever becomes relevant, resource extension. But closed fuel
cycles will be more expensive than once through cycles, until ore resources become
very scarce. This is unlikely to happen even with significant growth in nuclear
power deployment until the end of this century.
We also find that the long-term
waste management benefits of separation are outweighed by the short-term
risks and costs.

Thus our paramount recommendation is:
For the next decades, government and industry in the United States and
elsewhere should give priority to deployment of the once-through fuel
cycle, rather than development of the more expensive closed fuel cycle
technology involving reprocessing and new advanced thermal or fast reactor
technologies.


<snip>

We have not found and, based on current knowledge, do not believe it is realistic
to expect that there are new reactor and fuel cycle technologies that simultaneously
overcome the problems of cost, safety, waste, and proliferation.


Source: http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-19-09 09:54 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. Anti-hype.
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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Dec-20-09 01:38 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. I take it you didn't watch the video.
:hi:
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Dec-20-09 06:09 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I did.
I also watched the long versions.
:hi:
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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-22-09 04:39 AM
Response to Reply #7
8. So your responses addressed what parts of the video, exactly?
Or were they just random?
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-22-09 07:51 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Did you watch the video?
For example, at 1:27, the video makes the false and misleading claim: "Thorium's no good for nuclear weapons".
That's an outright lie, debunked in post #3 by Garwin and in post #4 by MIT:
We have not found and, based on current knowledge, do not believe it is realistic
to expect that there are new reactor and fuel cycle technologies that simultaneously
overcome the problems of cost, safety, waste, and proliferation.

The video is anti-science pseudo-science hype.
Obama's science advisor John Holdren participated in the MIT report,
don't expect him to be fooled by this crap.

In case you don't know who Garwin is, he designed the first H-bomb, he is an authority on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/who-built-the-h-bomb-debate-revives.html?pagewanted=all
Who Built The H-Bomb? Debate Revives
April 24, 2001

After suffering a heart attack, Edward Teller took a breath, sat down with a friend and a tape recorder and offered his views on the secret history of the hydrogen bomb.

''So that first design,'' Dr. Teller said, ''was made by Dick Garwin.'' He repeated the credit, ensuring there would be no misunderstanding.

Dr. Teller, now 93, was not ceding the laurels for devising the bomb -- a glory he claims for himself. But he was rewriting how the rough idea became the world's most feared weapon. His tribute, made more than two decades ago but just now coming to light, adds a surprising twist to a dispute that has roiled historians and scientists for decades: who should get credit for designing the H-bomb?

<snip>

Dr. Garwin arrived at Los Alamos in May 1951 from the University of Chicago, where he had been a star in the laboratory of Enrico Fermi, the Nobel laureate and arguably the day's top physicist. Dr. Garwin had been at Los Alamos the previous summer and, intrigued by the work, had come back for another atomic sabbatical.

In the interview, Dr. Garwin recalled that Dr. Teller had told him of the new idea and asked him to design an experiment to prove that it would work -- something the Los Alamos regulars failed to do. ''They were burnt out'' from too many rush efforts to build and test prototype nuclear arms, Dr. Garwin recalled. ''So I did it.''

By July 1951, after talking at the weapons laboratory with physicists and engineers, he had sketched a preliminary design. Of its features, Dr. Garwin said, ''There is still very little I'm allowed to say.''

He continued working on the design until he went back to Chicago that fall. Then, as momentum built at Los Alamos for the H-bomb, many experts joined the design effort, which was finished in early 1952.

The prototype bomb stood two stories high. In November 1952, it vaporized the Pacific island of Elugelab, a mile in diameter. Its power was equal to 10.4 million tons of high explosive, or about 700 times the power of atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Unlike its atomic predecessors, the hydrogen bomb theoretically had no destructive limits. Its fuel was cheap, and its force could be made as large as desired. Scientists talked of doomsday weapons big enough to blow the earth's atmosphere into space, or to raise ocean waves that crushed whole nations.

<snip>

Some background on him at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin

Richard Lawrence Garwin (born April 19, 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio<1>), is an American physicist. He received his bachelor's degree from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947 and obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1949, where he worked in the lab of Enrico Fermi.

Garwin is IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. For many years he was an adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University and, from 1952, a scientist at the IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University,<2> retiring from IBM in 1993.<3> He has also been an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Garwin received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for the fields of science and engineering, award year 2002.<3><4><5>

Among other things, Garwin was the author of the actual design used in the first hydrogen bomb (code-named Mike) in 1952.<6> He was assigned the job by Edward Teller, with the instructions that he was to make it as conservative a design as possible in order to prove the concept was feasible (as such, the Mike device was not intended to be a usable weapon design, with tons of cryogenic equipment required for its use).<7>

While at IBM, he was the "catalyst" for the discovery and publication of the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm, and did research on inkjet printing.

Dr. Garwin is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.<8> He also served on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States in 1998. He is also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group.


More background on him at the Federation of American Scientists:
http://www.fas.org/rlg/

Richard L. Garwin was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1928. He received the B.S. in Physics from Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, in 1947, and the Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1949.

He is IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. After three years on the faculty of the University of Chicago, he joined IBM Corporation in 1952, and was until June 1993 IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York; Adjunct Research Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Columbia University. In addition, he is a consultant to the U.S. government on matters of military technology, arms control, etc. He has been Director of the IBM Watson Laboratory, Director of Applied Research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and a member of the IBM Corporate Technical Committee. He has also been Professor of Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. From 1994 to 2004 he was Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

He has made contributions in the design of nuclear weapons, in instruments and electronics for research in nuclear and low-temperature physics, in the establishment of the nonconservation of parity and the demonstration of some of its striking consequences, in computer elements and systems, including superconducting devices, in communication systems, in the behavior of solid helium, in the detection of gravitational radiation, and in military technology. He has published more than 500 papers and been granted 45 U.S. patents. He has testified to many Congressional committees on matters involving national security, transportation, energy policy and technology, and the like. He is coauthor of many books, among them Nuclear Weapons and World Politics (1977), Nuclear Power Issues and Choices (1977), Energy: The Next Twenty Years (1979), Science Advice to the President (1980), Managing the Plutonium Surplus: Applications and Technical Options (1994), Feux Follets et Champignons Nucleaires (1997) (in French with Georges Charpak), Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? (2001) (with Georges Charpak), and "De Tchernobyl en tchernobyls," (with Georges Charpak and Venance Journe) (2005).

He was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee 1962-65 and 1969-72, and of the Defense Science Board 1966-69. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the IEEE, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2002 he was elected again to the Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

The citation accompanying his 1978 election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering reads "Contributions applying the latest scientific discoveries to innovative practical engineering applications contributing to national security and economic growth." He received the 1983 Wright Prize for interdisciplinary scientific achievement, the 1988 AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award, the 1991 Erice "Science for Peace" Prize, and from the U.S. Government the 1996 R.V. Jones Foreign Intelligence Award and the 1996 Enrico Fermi Award. In 2003 he received from the President the National Medal of Science.

From 1977 to 1985 he was on the Council of the Institute for Strategic Studies (London), and during 1978 was Chairman of the Panel on Public Affairs of the American Physical Society. He is a long-time member of Pugwash and has served on the Pugwash Council.

His work for the government has included studies on antisubmarine warfare, new technologies in health care, sensor systems, military and civil aircraft, and satellite and strategic systems, from the point of view of improving such systems as well as assessing existing capabilities. For example, he contributed to the first U.S. photographic reconnaissance satellite program, CORONA, that returned 3 million feet of film from almost 100 successful flights 1960-1972.

He has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff and was in 1998 a Commissioner on the 9-person "Rumsfeld" Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. From 1993 to August 2001, he chaired the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board of the Department of State. On the 40th anniversary of the founding of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) he was recognized as one of the ten Founders of National Reconnaissance. In June, 2002, he was awarded la Grande Medaille de l'Academie des Sciences (France)-2002.


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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-23-09 02:22 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. You love cherry picking. The video doesn't say it can't make them, simply that it's not ideal.
Garwin doesn't disagree with the video, he is explicitly disagreeing with a completely different article that did make an absolutist claim. The video makes no such claims.

You haven't established anywhere that the video is "anti-science." Only that you have selective vision / hearing.
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-23-09 05:51 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. Nope - not cherry picking
You asked "your responses addressed what parts of the video, exactly?"
So I wasted my time giving you an "exact" frame location as one example.
Instead of admitting they were wrong, you falsely accuse me of cherry picking.
So you're just playing games.
That whole video is hype claiming that lftr solves the problems of proliferation, cost, safety, and waste.
That's fantasy and hype - the MIT report politely describes it as not realistic:
We have not found and, based on current knowledge, do not believe it is realistic
to expect that there are new reactor and fuel cycle technologies that simultaneously
overcome the problems of cost, safety, waste, and proliferation.

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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-23-09 08:34 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. You're absolutely lying, that is not established by the video at all.
They are introducing a technology that has benefits which were never realized due to the focus on reactors that were more ideal for creating bombs, you won't argue with each point because they're all true (and not "anti-science" as you claim). So what you do is generalize and box in the concepts in the video as being precisely what they are not, an absolutist claim of nonsense.
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bananas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-24-09 05:54 AM
Response to Reply #12
13. Nope - here's a screen capture from the video
Here's a screen capture at 1:28, it says "Thorium's no good for nuclear weapons."
That's a false statement.


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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-24-09 09:18 AM
Response to Reply #13
14. Do you know what "no good" means?
The article being criticized stated, "could never produce more than a fizzle," this video says "no good."

Do you know what "no good" means in this context?

Pronunciation: \'no-'gu?d\
Function: adjective
Date: 1908

: having no worth, virtue, use, or chance of success <a no–good scoundrel>

Do you understand what the difference between "never" and "not useful" is?

Golly, gee, they actually go out of their way to explain that it can be used but that it's not ideal.
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tialsedov Donating Member (16 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-06-10 01:15 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. None of you really understand why Thorium "is no good for weapons".
The basis of the good doctor's view that it can be used for nuke WMD is on the physics and math of U233. This is true. But what makes it "no good" is that it's too damn hot to get near.

1. It stays thermally hot for 10 years. You can't get near it to steal it.
2. It is is a huge gamma emitter that is easily detectable from space. You can't get near it steal it.
3. It is easy to create and mix it with U232, making it *impossible* to separate out the U233 from the fluid mix and use it for a bomb.
4. The US Army *tried* to make a U233 and failed miserably. Their recommendation was never to try again as it is: "Stupid" when it's so much easier to make a bomb using plutonium.

So... in effect, in FACT: U233 is no good for a nuclear weapon.
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