Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore

[Alan Grayson]

https://planetofthehumans.com/

Largely correct, but omits the solution; thorium reactors. Check Wiki for the residuals; no gamma rays. AG

[Alan Grayson]

On Friday, July 24, 2020 at 12:51:23 AM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

https://planetofthehumans.com/

Largely correct, but omits the solution; Thorium reactors. Check Wiki for the residuals; no gamma rays. AG

Residuals = waste products; harmless for Thorium reactors, unlike waste products from Uranium and Plutonium reactors, and Thorium is fairly abundant in the Earth's crust. Andrew Yang mentioned Thorium reactors in the second democratic debate. If Biden is elected, he will hopefully become science advisor. AG  

[Lawrence Crowell]

Thorium fission is based on a breeder cycle for thorium to protactinium then to uranium as U232 or U233. The uranium is then fissioned. The standard products of uranium fission are Radon and Barium. These are gamma sources. So while I am not an expert on this sort of nuclear physics I am not sure about the claim that the waste is free of gamma emitters.

LC

[Alan Grayson]

On Friday, July 24, 2020 at 5:46:45 AM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Thorium fission is based on a breeder cycle for thorium to protactinium then to uranium as U232 or U233. The uranium is then fissioned. The standard products of uranium fission are Radon and Barium. These are gamma sources. So while I am not an expert on this sort of nuclear physics I am not sure about the claim that the waste is free of gamma emitters.

LC

   

This is my source:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium   AG

[Alan Grayson]

On Friday, July 24, 2020 at 6:01:24 AM UTC-6, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Friday, July 24, 2020 at 5:46:45 AM UTC-6, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Thorium fission is based on a breeder cycle for thorium to protactinium then to uranium as U232 or U233. The uranium is then fissioned. The standard products of uranium fission are Radon and Barium. These are gamma sources. So while I am not an expert on this sort of nuclear physics I am not sure about the claim that the waste is free of gamma emitters.

LC

   

This is my source:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium   AG

This article is also pertinent.    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the-superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 2:51 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://planetofthehumans.com/

Largely correct, but omits the solution; thorium reactors. Check Wiki for the residuals; no gamma rays. AG

YES! I've been a fan of Thorium reactors for years, in particular Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) and I'm very impressed, I don't believe nearly enough is being done in this area. Consider the advantages:

*Thorium is much more common than Uranium, almost twice as common as Tin in fact. And Thorium is easier to extract from its ore than Uranium.

*A Thorium reactor burns up all the Thorium in it so at current usage that element could supply our energy needs for many thousands, perhaps millions of years; A conventional light water reactor only burns .7% of the Uranium in it.

* To burn the remaining 99.3% of Uranium you'd have to use a exotic fast neutron breeder reactor, Thorium reactors use slow neutrons and so are inherently more stable because you have much more time to react if something goes wrong. Also breeders produce massive amounts of Plutonium which is a bad thing if you're worried about people making bombs. 

*Thorium reactors produce an insignificant amount of Plutonium, they do produce Uranium-233 and theoretically you could make a bomb out of that, but it would be contaminated with Uranium-232 which is a powerful gamma ray emitter which would make it suicidal to work with unless extraordinary precautions were taken, and even then the unexploded bomb would be so radioactive it would give away its location if you tried to hide it, and the gamma rays would destroy its electronic firing circuits, and degrade its chemical explosives. As far as I know a U-233 bomb was attempted only twice, in 1955 the USA set off a Plutonium/U233 composite bomb, it was expected to produce 33 kilotons but only managed 22; the only pure U-233 bomb I know of was set off in 1998 by India, but it was a fizzle, a complete flop, it produced a minuscule explosion of only equivalent to 200 tons of TNT due to pre-detonation. For these reasons even after 75 years no nation currently has U233 bombs in their arsenal because if you want to kill people on a mass scale Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 are far more practical than Uranium-233.

*A Thorium reactor only produces about 1% as much radioactive waste as a conventional reactor, and the stuff it does make is not as nasty, after about 5 years 87% of it would be safe and the remaining 13% in 300 years; a conventional reactor would take 100,000 years.

*A LFTR Thorium reactor has an inherent safety feature, the fuel is in liquid form (Thorium dissolved in un-corrosive molten Fluoride salts) so if for whatever reason things get too hot the liquid expands and so the fuel gets less dense and the reaction slows down.

*There is yet another fail safe device. At the bottom of the reactor is something called a "freeze plug", fans blow on it to freeze it solid, if things get too hot the plug melts and the liquid drains out into a holding tank and the reaction stops; also, if all electronic controls die due to a loss of electrical power the fans will stop the plug will melt and the reaction will stop.

*Thorium reactors work at much higher temperatures than conventional reactors so you have better energy efficiency; in fact they are so hot the waste heat could be used to desalinate sea water or generate hydrogen fuel from water.

* Although the liquid Fluoride salt is very hot it is not under pressure so that makes the plumbing of the thing much easier, and even if you did get a leak it would not be the utter disaster it would be in a conventional reactor; that's also why the containment building in common light water reactors need to be so much larger than the reactor itself and why the walls of it needs to be so thick. With Thorium nothing is under pressure and there is no danger of a disastrous phase change, like ultra hot pressurized water turning into steam, so the super expensive containment building can be made much more compact.

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

My thought on these reactors, since I first read about them in Gerard K O'Neil's 2081, and O'Neil wrote about Canada's CANDU reactor built in 1967. I had never heard of anything beyond uranium or plutonium, before this. I am doubtful of ever getting molten salt reactors, sodium moderated reactors. or even fluoride moderated reactors. For sodium as Scientific American said: "Sodium burns upon contact with air, and explodes upon contact with water."  For Michael Moore, had he even considered fission (any prototype) he would literally be lynched by his Party cohorts. I support anything that has a chance of solving energy and environment issues. Count on Moore and his fellows to ignore fission for ideological reasons.

Mitch

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[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 11:14:06 AM UTC-6, spudb...@aol.com wrote:

My thought on these reactors, since I first read about them in Gerard K O'Neil's 2081, and O'Neil wrote about Canada's CANDU reactor built in 1967. I had never heard of anything beyond uranium or plutonium, before this. I am doubtful of ever getting molten salt reactors, sodium moderated reactors. or even fluoride moderated reactors. For sodium as Scientific American said: "Sodium burns upon contact with air, and explodes upon contact with water."  For Michael Moore, had he even considered fission (any prototype) he would literally be lynched by his Party cohorts. I support anything that has a chance of solving energy and environment issues. Count on Moore and his fellows to ignore fission for ideological reasons.

Mitch

I disagree with your assessment of Moore. If he had been worried about political blow-back (from the left), he wouldn't have produced the film. AG 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 24, 2020 2:51 am
Subject: Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore

https://planetofthehumans.com/

Largely correct, but omits the solution; thorium reactors. Check Wiki for the residuals; no gamma rays. AG

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[spudb...@aol.com]

I am not disagreeing with him via energy proposals,  His proposals are not compliant with the current view of "renewable energy" view of energy being ideologically correct. He would be pelted in the streets, today, and over at Reddit, his view, denigrated, and actually was over in Futurology, + Energy Discussions. 

For myself, I am all about what the engineers produce. If we can do it with solar, lets. If solar and wind are somehow unreachable, fine, safer nukes (if we can even do that!).

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[Lawrence Crowell]

The LFTR, which I agree is a better system, is more stable because the slow neutron cycle means it runs at a lower energy and thus temperature. It is not a susceptible to meltdown. However, the fissile wastes are still a problem.

If thorium fission reactors become a normal part of our world, more than likely they will have "Made in China" embossed on them. They are working along these lines.

The U --> Np --> Pu fast breeder operates with higher energy and the neutrons are higher energy or "fast." This was decided by Nixon in part because Pu-239 is useful in nuclear weapons because it does not spontaneously fission. The commercial nuclear power system is a sort of after-thought,

LC

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 10:36 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> the fissile wastes are still a problem.

But With a Thorium reactor it's a much more modest problem then with a Uranium Reactor.

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

For a piece of engineering we have to keep in mind what is the most promising, and yet safe and affordable? This concern has nuked nuclear reactors over the years. For those light water reactors that were built over the 60 years, most are still operating and "reasonably safe," so far. To expand the abundance of electricity that our species needs to survive, we have to work within the constraints of engineering. For the best efficiency and costs we need to use advanced solar cells to power up advanced batteries, to be used for all residences, on a 7 x 24 basis. Anything less, is just environmentalists having  their say over the rest of us. There have been big advances in solar cells and batteries lately, and this is the cheapest and easiest way to go. 

One is the perfected perovskite solar cell, created by many of the leading British universities all on their own. Before this, any perovskite based device would crumble to dust upon exposure to air. 

https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/semiconductor-materials-devices-nanostructures/photovoltaics

Or this-

https://energynow.com/2020/07/technology-breakthrough-could-increase-ev-range-battery-life/

For safer nuclear fission operation (uranium 235) Nuscale's mini light water reactor uses this innovation, from Lightbridge, originally developed by Purdue school of Engr.

https://www.ltbridge.com/lightbridge-fuel

Advantage? Safer because its much harder to melt down. It doesn't hold the heat like the 1940's assemblies cobbled together by Enrico Fermi.

Or even better, these Triso fuel modules seem inherently safer, yet this concept is for a gas reactor, and I fear that the coolant gas is helium (short supply) rather than say, CO2, or Nitrogen? 

https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-power-balls-triso-fuel/

-----Original Message-----

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To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Jul 24, 2020 11:13 am
Subject: Re: Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore

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[Brent Meeker]

No number of solar panels and battteries are going to provide enough electricity in Montreal and Fairbanks in middle of winter.  Maybe we can send it there from Arizona, but LFTRs and HTGR nuclear power looks like a better bet to me.  General Atomic is developing some relatively small modular nuclear power plants.

Brent

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