Bishop Hill Why is Beddington against thorium
Jun 13, 2011 Bureaucrats Energy GWPF have an interesting article about a promising new nuclear power technology - thorium reactors. Perhaps most intriguing is Sir John Beddington's opposition to their development:
...although the Coalition Government continues to pour subsidies worth many millions of pounds into wind power, which, as Live revealed earlier this year, produces at best intermittent energy with potential environmental costs, it has so far decided to do nothing about thorium except to maintain a ‘watching brief’.
The reason is that a review last year by the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, concluded that thorium research shouldn’t be a priority, as ‘development of the appropriate technology would appear to be some way into the future’.
That could be described as a depressingly circular argument: if the scientists aren’t funded to pursue the research and development, the technology will indeed remain in the future. Meanwhile, the reasons for Sir John’s pessimistic assessment seem baffling.
In a letter to Cywinski, he admitted the science behind thorium reactors was ‘well based’, and said the main reason he couldn’t recommend government support was because there had never been research on how to reprocess thorium fuel ‘on an industrial scale’.
But this, says Cywinski, totally missed the point: not only would thorium plants produce far less waste, but their fuel – which would only need to be refreshed every ten years, as opposed to 18 months in a conventional nuclear reactor – wouldn’t need to be reprocessed at all.
You do rather get the impression that Sir John has picked the government's winner for them - wind "power".
Reader Comments (73)
Witness the fundamentally deluded Great and Good, with their overt or covert anti-nuclear bias (dating back decades, in most cases), derailing our future.
This is what the energy rationalists of the world are up against.
Once Rossi has proven his LENR technology come October, then thorium will be obsolete technology anyway, and Greece will be one of Europe's richest nations.
We can always hope...
http://pesn.com/2011/05/31/9501837_Cold-Fusion_Number-1_Claims_NASA_Chief/
No mention of thorium in that link steveta.....
Confused, no mention of thorium, because Rossi's device uses nickel - much more abundant, much cheaper, makes thorium obsolete before it's been deployed.
More details here:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator
The National Nuclear Laboratory produced a report to be found here:
http://www.nnl.co.uk/assets/_files/documents/jan_11/nex__1294397524_Thorium_Fuel_Cycle_-_Position_.pdf
which pours cold water on the idea of developing thorium as a fuel. Others, more expert than I am, will be able to comment upon it.
The NNL have also published a paper on national Nucear Horizons to be found here:
http://www.nnl.co.uk/positionpapers
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator
A hoax can be easily identified if it meets three criteria:
1) There is no working model or prototype that can be observed and measured.
2) There is no scientifically accepted theory as to how such a model or prototype would work.
3) There is a conspiracy involved to cover up, hide or discredit the model.
The link easily meets all three criteria, it is a hoax.
Redbone, since the consensus says Rossi is a hoaxster, then it must be true. Silly of me...
When you consider that we're sinking cash into JET and ITER, with even less likelihood of success, it does seem rather odd that Thorium is being avoided.
" Sir John has picked the government's winner for them"
No I think government has picked Sir John's winner for him. The way to become government chief science advisor is to advise them and more importantly us that whatever the govenment wants is right. He is not a scientist he is a state advertising flack posing as a scientist.
Actually, CAGW also easily meets the three hoax criteria:
1) There is no working model.
2) There is no scientifically accepted theory as to how such a model would work.
3) There is a conspiracy involved to cover up, hide or discredit the model.
oldtimer
Thorium has considerable potential, but faces technological and market-driven problems at present. The issues are examined in a World Nuclear Association report which concludes:
Neil Craig
Dunno about your conclusions, but Beddington is being naive indeed if he is really backing wind as the means to decarbonise electricity generation in the UK.
Nobody with any real knowledge of the UK energy mix, markets and infrastructure would ever do that.
The Rossi Thing? Turn Ni into Cu by adding H?
Well, yeees.....but where's the radiation? It's not that we don't have a theory which can explain the process: it's that we have a theory which explains why it cannot work.
Ni plus H to get Cu: fine, it happens in stars, that's where Cu comes from. But not without radiation.
BBD he is only being incredibly niave if his intention is to speak truth to power. If his objective is to keep his job; become a high heid-yin at the Royal Society and given a lordship then his advice is entirely logical. A lot of public policy research shows that senior people in government are mostly either equally niave or equally motivated by personal good rather than that of the public.
The problems include:
'The high cost of fuel fabrication, due partly to the high radioactivity of U-233 chemically separated from the irradiated thorium fuel. Separated U-233 is always contaminated with traces of U-232 (69 year half-life but whose daughter products such as thallium-208 are strong gamma emitters with very short half-lives). Although this confers proliferation resistance to the fuel cycle by making U-233 hard to handle and easy to detect, it results in increased costs.
The similar problems in recycling thorium itself due to highly radioactive Th-228 (an alpha emitter with two-year half life) present.'
I understand that these problems are referring to using Thorium in traditional reactors, such as the CANDU design. They do not apply to MSR or the so-called 'Energy Amplifier' design proposed initially by Rubbia and now by British scientists at Daresbury.
see; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2001548/Electron-Model-Many-Applications-Technology-save-world.html
Neil Craig
Sounds like we are both in agreement then... ;-)
S Matthews
Yes - it's a common mistake (or deliberate misrepresentation) to focus on the problems with thorium in conventional reactors and ignore molten salt reactors (MSRs).
What is required is precisely what Beddington seems to be thwarting - more research and development.
As Tim Worstall will be happy to remind us, there's something called opportunity cost which means that you cannot spend the same money twice. So every penny wasted on renewables is a penny that could have been invested in nuclear R&D.
Now we must pause to consider how much money has been pissed away on renewables over the last decade, and what might have been achieved had it been spent more wisely.
Beddington has a first degree in economics from the LSE and PhD in Biology from Edinburgh. With the deepest respect to his fellow students Saif Gaddafi and Tony Hayward, Beddington has no training in the physical sciences or engineering.
Beddington probably learned all he ever needs to know about nuclear power from Bill Nye.
Further evidence on what a tremendous waste of space Beddington is: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/bispartners/goscience/docs/t/11-974-tipping-points-meeting-london-14-march-2011.pdf
Tim Worstall, Rossi doesn't claim there is no radiation - just no radioactivity. The 'reactor' is lead shielded during use.
Its appears that once people, scientists included, take the Government Shilling, they are required to have a frontal lobotomy.
There is no other rational explanation.
steveta_uk
It would be rather wonderful if Rossi was right, but Fleishmann and Pons were respected researchers too and they were wrong. I remember that hoopla well.
So I think I will remain politely sceptical until the 1MW prototype is unveiled in a few months time.
Or not, as the case may be.
I guess one factor here - to be generous towards Beddington - is that fission reactors are really not popular with the public, especially in the aftermath of the problems at the Japanese nuclear plant. We might disagree with the public's assessment of the dangers of radioactivity, but we can't simply wish it away, and nor can the government. In fact, some of the more heated arguments that I can remember between regulars here (I leave out the arguments with Z and her ilk) have been about the dangers of nuclear power. So what policy should one pursue? Seen in this light, Beddington's attitudes are no longer quite so crazy. Putting huge amounts of money into ITER and the fusion program yet none into Thorium starts to make sense if you think that the public might accept fusion, "clean nuclear power, the sort that drives the sun", but be more wary of fission, having been sold the "electricity too cheap to meter" story once before. If the government announced, for the sake of argument, that it was going to sponsor a Thorium liquid bed pilot plant in Dudley, you can imagine that this might lead to the mother of all NIMBY outbreaks. There might be ways around that, but they do not spring to mind all that easily.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors surely deserve serious consideration for future energy supplies.
Visit Kirk Sorensen's excellent site at Energy from Thorium.
LNER would be magic but... we'll see.
Confused, no mention of thorium, because Rossi's device uses nickel - much more abundant, much cheaper, makes thorium obsolete before it's been deployed.
From what I have been told, the big issue with the development of the Rossi device is an adequate supply of polywater to cool it.
j
Fair comment, as ever.
The problem arises for me when we turn to the policy direction imposed by New Labour via the Climate Change Act and the unelected CCC that enforces it to this day.
- If the UK wishes to trailblaze emissions reduction policy it must decarbonise electricity generation
- This is to be achieved by phasing out coal-fired plant
- The choices are simple: nuclear and renewables (with gas as a bridging technology)
- Renewables cannot deliver either reliability or capacity sufficient to displace coal
- Nuclear is the only possible technology choice
But instead UK energy policy is fast-tracking wind into the energy mix and back-pedalling on new nuclear and R&D into developing better nuclear technology for the future.
This is a recipe for disaster as Beddington ought to know. The public mistrust of nuclear is actually somewhat beside the point if the actual policy goal - emissions reduction in line with the CCA binding obligations - is being served.
One must remember that emissions reduction is the only reason why wind and other renewables have been so recklessly pushed by two successive governments at vast public expense.
Is the confusion about the facts is so great that the government and its chief scientist don't know that renewables cannot deliver the stated policy goal?
Or do a considerable number of people know full well, and are they concealing the facts from the electorate?
It does make you wonder.
China announced it intends to develop thorium reactors:
http://www.itheo.org/articles/china-announces-thorium-energy-project
Don Pablo
Amusing.
Don B
China (and India) are investing R&D in thorium as well as other 'Generation IV' nuclear technologies. That's how we will find out which ones work best. It's a rather sensibly policy approach.
Which is why our own chief scientist appears to be giving poor advice to government.
Before you laugh, I actually bought a Thunderer today and lo and behold!
An article - pro boondoggles written by non other than his high and very mightily above you lot - Lord Browne of BP fame- who indirectly maybe - [see wiki] in part responsible for the current disaster that is BP.
"Wind has the power to be North Sea oil Mark II" no less................so in I waded.
Sorry pay-wall protected etc.
In the first paragraph he lets fly with, [paraphrasing]: we'll be installing a 30 storeys tall new turbine everyday till 2020 and thus, we'll have 13 GW capacity blah blah.
Quote: "That ambition is brave and justified" he goes on to say in the next paragraph.
He rattles on about how Britain is losing out on this great 'green' bonanza drawing a totally in-apposite analogy with the black gold rush and profitability of North Sea oil and gas.
In the penultimate paragraph he makes his final boastful play:
"Some argue it is wrong for the State to support a new industry. But we have a powerful precedent in the last great energy revolution in the UK - North Sea oil and gas. People forget that it was supported in its early days with tax incentives strategic infrastructure and training programmes. The UK oil and gas supply chain today generates £16 billion a year, employing 300, 000 people in the UK, 80 per cent of them outside the South East."
Of course, just one problem your Lordship, all that [Oil and Gas] expenditure was returned with a bountiful and vastly multiplied profit - to the British government - yer see oil and gas are very valuable commodities!!!
Even if we cover the land and seas with wind-farms, the electricity is so intermittent and unreliable it's virtually unmarketable and a northern Euro-super-grid is just not feasible - the only unfortunates who will pay for it - are us!
Throwing money at windmills, is not investment, it is money down the drain, these are not jobs created in a free market dynamic - the technology and the steel producers are simply not there gone to TATA India and with the government's daft programme of Carbon pricing - any firm rolling up on these shores will want guarantees that it will not be taxed through unhelpful carbon pricing - another damn subsidy!
How can a business man be so purblind? Or is it a disingenuous scheme, a sting. Is it not, all about the bottom line?
And therefore: lying and spin - it is OK -further - then to pull the wool over the eyes of the "gormless British public".
I could go on - but detonation point is being reached...... I cannot endure long - advocates, liars and shills with their wallets tied up in the process, outcomes and more especially though: when it's my money [and I don't get an effin choice in the matter] - where do HMG get 'em from. I say the gov' because - he surely is the PR man for the DOECC.
Mind you he does have some minor interests in Green technology and fingers in the pies of various 'interested funds' - all reliant on massive taxpayer subsidy need I tell you [cynical moi?] and he's a member of the Royal Society - nuff said.
Athelstan
Anyone who claims that wind has the power to be North Sea oil II is explicitly claiming that wind is despatchable in the same way that oil - and more relevantly - gas-fired plant is.
Since this is manifestly not so, the rest of Browne's patter falls flat on its face.
Now we all know this, so why doesn't he? As you say, is it a scam, or are many at the top just fantastically stupid?
And how do we tell which is which?
BBD
Which is why our own chief scientist appears to be giving poor advice to government.
I suspect that either he has been drinking the polywater or is in the employ of the Chinese.
I see no reason why Thorium reactors should not be researched vigorously.
"And how do we tell which is which?"
A good question BBD, a very good question.
Watched this informative video on Thorium recently by Kirk Sorensen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8
It's from 2009.
@ Athelstan and BBD: On the question of whether fraud or stupidity is the factor (a mixture of both I'd say, plus a bit of cognitive dissonance and a smidgen of noble-cause corruption), couldn't it also be the well-known phenomenon IBGYBG ("I'll be gone, you'll be gone") which so infests politics and much else these days?
SimonW
The youtube is a bit long...any key points worth watching?
The NNL paper looks pretty persuasive to me as a layman. Long way to go, lots of risks, almost certainly the "benefits" will be watered down in practice. Rather like the boast years ago that nuclear would provide virtually free, unlimited energy. Did not work out quite as simple as that.
The point about Government Scientific Advisors is that, for at least 30 years, they seem to have been carefully chosen to give Government the advice it is most comfortable with and which best fits their agenda.
'Activists' to a man.
We complain, with reason, about the likely negative effects of anti-nuclear sentiment pervading the policy making process in the UK, but it could be so much worse.
Just look at what Greenpeace is trying to do in India:
Read the rest here.
I occasionally rant about the menace to humanity from stupid Greens. This is the kind of thing that gets me going.
DougieJ,
IBGYBG, yes, one of the constant frustrations of our professional politicians is, they can be all things to all men, save the planet, feed the starving and yet and yet...........they cannot do anything to address the most pressing problems ie, those 'elephantine problems residing on their front doorsteps.
The lack of accountability is the biggest of these, if we had redress, at least the mess could be confronted, whilst the executive is on another planet, there is little chance of anything changing.
In the end and without doubt, events shall overtake this politically induced mass public hypnotic nightmare [trance] we are in.
Martin
I've often wondered if the Goverment Chief Scientist is an externally advertised appointment.
About Rossi's e-Cat; this could well be a scam, but it has not got the fingerprint of such. Rossi has got a Patent from the Italian Patent Office and still waiting for the US one. Meanwhile he has made public demos in the presence of the press, scientists, on various occasions. A one megawatt thermal plant is claimed to be under construction in Greece by Defkalion and will be in operation this October. Sales will ramp up by the end of the year. A similar and parallel operation in the US is being handeld by some firm named Ampenergo.
One cannot just kill a fire and it's inventor just because the chief of the tribe does not understand how it is started and how it works. Wait till October/November and it could be that we see a scam fizzling out, or a flame turning into a big fire.
With regard to thorium reactors, the US had already known how to buil tone way back in the 60's but since thorium reactors do not produce weapon grade nuclear fuel, and Uranium one do, the choice fell upon Uranium reactors.
China and India will 'soon' have their first thorium reactors feeding energy to the steam boilers and powering turbines and generators. Obama and the EU goons just dont get it.
Thorium is a perfectly viable fertile nuclide for a nuclear reactor, it makes little or no sense to be using thorium at the moment.
The bulk of the cost in a nuclear reactor is the design and complexity, and thorium reactors (particularly MSR) represent a design and material engineering cost far above that of a uranium reactor. While uranium is cheap and plentiful, it makes no sense to go to thorium. As naturally occurring U-235 becomes rarer, and more expensive, then thorium will make more sense.
One thing that annoys me a bit is the exaggeration from thorium advocates. U-233, the fissile material generated from thorium, can both be used to make bombs and is just as much of a problem in terms of waste as anything coming out of conventional uranium reactors. Furthermore, as it has strong gamma emitters in its decay chain, it must be handled robotically, creating all manner of additional problems.
That said, whilst commercially thermal uranium reactors make more sense, I would have no objection to research money being spent. As noted, research into developing thorium would be far more valuable than ploughing money into useless, expensive wind energy.
From that EMMA article
"Back then, though, at the height of the Cold War, there was little official appetite for pursuing the technology. The reason was that a thorium reactor is effectively useless at producing material for weapons.
‘Thorium has so many apparent advantages that you have to ask why the world ever went with uranium,’ says Dr Bill Nuttall, an energy-technology expert at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School.
"
and
"Possibly because there remains a powerful vested interest in the ‘old’ uranium nuclear industry, this commitment hasn’t yet been matched by the UK Government."
The second quote I thank pretty much explains why Beddington is so dismissive of the thorium fuel cycle. the fact is ther are many companies and organisations (including NNL) in the UK nuclear industry who do not want to change the status quo as they are doing very nicely out the current uranium/plutonium based fuel cycle thank you very much.
In my previous career (I'm now a software developer), I was involved in nuclear research and development for over 20 years. While doing the 'milk round' during the final year of my physics degree, I was interviewed by a UKAEA representative with whom I had a very interesting conversation about the relative merits of the thorium fuel cycle. Needless to say I didn't get past that interview stage as I strongly disagreed with him. He thought that R&D into the thorium fuel cycle was unnecessary as the UK nuclear industry was already committed to thermal reactors based on the uranium fuel cycle followed eventually by fast breeder reactors 'seeded' with mixed oxide U/Pu fuel from the reprocessing of thermal reactor fuel. As it later turned out I did get to join UKAEA after an initial 3 years with NNC and the rest is history as they say.
During my time with UKAEA I was fortunate to be seconded to work at Torness NPS as an 'attached staff member' which meant I got to visit almost all of the UKAEA, BNFL and CEGB's nucler research sites and as a result got to witness first hand many developments in the UK's nuclear industry including the fusion research at JET, Culham.
I was once accused of having 'preconceived ideas' on the fast reactor by one of my bosses at NNC (I thought fast recators were a useless technology if the breeding ratio is less than 1 which it was and ha sbeen for all fast reactors built so far) when I was a graduate trainee at NNC before joining UKAEA. I was later proven right in regard to fast reactors when eventually we abandoned all plans for CDFR within the UK and PFR at Dounreay was shutdown. Since my first visit as a graduate trainee to JET, I have also always thought that fusion research is a dead end. IMO no amount of money spent on fusion research is ever going to result in the development of a commercially viable fusion based nuclear power generation plant.
Given the current 'vested interests' in retaining the uranium and reprocessed plutonium fuel cycle within the UK and the sad demise of the UKAEA which no longer exists (small remnants of it still do in the form of NNL) I doubt whether any further fundamental research is likely to take place into the thorium fuel cycle within the UK. The 'vested interests' within the now non-UK owned nuclear industry have already decided that the UK's nuclear future lies with building thermal reactors based on 'light water' reactor designs fuelled by nuclear fuels based on the uranium/reprocessed plutonium fuel cycle. IMO this will remain the case for at least the next two nuclear power plant building programmes within the UK (so for approximately the next 40 to 50 years).
By then (assuming the UK still exists then and isn't just a small non-influential state with the United States of Europe) I think we will have realised just what a very big delusion the whole 'man is having a serious affect on the world's climate' was and we'll be digging coal back out of our UK coal mines again and burning it in non-CCS fitted Chinese designed modern coal-fired power plants.
But what about shale gas? Well that depends on 'vested interests' too. At present it's pretty obvious in my opinion that those who are paying off the BGS to announce that we don't have much shale gas within the UK and that drilling for it will cause increased incidents of significant sized earthquakes within the UK and pollution of our aquifers, will do therir damnedest to make sure that we don't even look for shale gas in the UK for at least the next 20 years. The last thing these people want is for the people of the UK to have a cheap indigenous energy supply again as they busy making as much profit as they can out of the UK consumer as it is. They clearly want to ensure that it stays that way for as long as possible and at the very least no doubt until they have bought up all the drilling rights that they can with the profit they are making off the back of the UK taxpayer/energy consumer.
Are we to infer from Sir John's position that any technology that will not impoverish the population is to be rejected?
Why is Beddington against thorium
Should be
Why is Beddington
against thoriumThis thread is based on the assumption that Beddington reached his decision following a rigorous and diligent assessment of the scientific evidence.
As there is no evidence that Beddington has any such capability........
There are no thorium reactors available to inspect in exotic destinations
Those nice chaps at IPCC CRU UEA etc did not like the idea
Caroline Lucas said so
Bob Ward also said so
Schneider and Erhlich said so
He thought thorium was a joke by Jonathan Ross
Spence_uk @9:39pm:
Yes, but many point to 'peak uranium' as a consequence of nuclear expansion without investment in Gen IV. Funding the rapid development of thorium MSR and IFR seems to be the obvious next step... but all the money is getting sucked up by renewables.
This is a fundamental policy error.
Don Pablo de la Sierra said:
I do. We save our pennies because China and India are spending theirs. It would be the height of economic rationality if we weren't then wasting our money on windmills.
For those interested in Thorium , there has been work going on "behind the scenes" -- the article is a few years old but interesting.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTE4OTN8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1
We save our pennies because China and India are spending theirs.
And then we can spent our pounds on buying the technology from them. Is that what is meant by "Penny wise and pound foolish"?
Whatever happened to American and British engineering and technological prowess?
This is an excellent presentation on the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) technology.
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
If combined with Small, Sealable, Transportable, Autonomous Reactor (SSTAR) being developed at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, the nuclear industry, still in its infancy, will be taking great strides forward.
https://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug04/Smith.html
China and India, with their enormous and rapidly growing need for abundant, inexpensive energy, have already set their path on thorium to meet future needs. In fact, nothing else will so completely satisfy the energy needs of half the world's peoples as LFTR. Or the energy needs of the entire world, once so-called leaders come to their senses. Unfortunately, they must follow their strange ideologies and waste scarce resources, including time, before they are compelled by reality to go nuclear with LFTR.