New Zealand Herald: "Only Way Is Full Steam Ahead" With Nuke Plants Including Thorium Reactors

So says Brian Leyland, consultant to the New Zealand electric power companies, in his February 27, 2012 article in the largest paper in New Zealand.

He says:

"For electricity, nuclear power and, in particular, reactors burning thorium, promise us a virtually unlimited supply of electricity at a reasonable price"

and:

"exposure to low levels of radiation is not harmful and may even give some immunity to cancer"

Why is he saying these? Probably because:

"It would reduce the cost of nuclear power and change the public perception of the danger of nuclear power",

which is likely to be benefiting the electric power companies who employ him.

It doesn't seem to have entered his mind that the cost of nuclear power generation may not be "reasonable" if you factor in the cost of:

• a potential accident like Fukushima which is bankrupting one of the largest companies in Japan (TEPCO);

• decommissioning the reactors (so much so that the US power companies are going to do nothing for 60 years)

I guess April Fool's Day came early in New Zealand. It somewhat reads like George Monbiot (albeit far less in-your-face than Monbiot), who famously said he became pro-nuke because of the Fukushima accident.

Unlike Monbiot who wrote right after the accident started, Leyland has zero reference to the nuclear accident in Japan, writing nearly one year after the accident started. And he talks about the cost of nuclear power generation. Amazing.

From New Zealand Herald (2/27/2012; emphasis is mine):

Brian Leyland: The only way is full steam ahead

Like many people living comfortably in developed economies John Peet is opposed to continued economic growth. Unlike John, I have worked extensively in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands so I have seen the misery and environmental damage resulting from poverty-stricken people doing their best to scratch a living.

The steam engine freed us from manual labour and expensive and polluting horsepower, and drove the transformation that we have seen in the past 200 years.

As a result of the prosperity it has brought, people in developed countries live longer and are healthier than they have ever been in the past. Access to low-cost energy, engineering and technology have driven this transformation. We have progressed from eking out a living from subsistence agriculture to having plenty of time for recreation and relaxation and living better than a king of 300 years ago.

Sixty years ago, I have clear memories of Auckland being covered in a pall of smoke from chimney pots, railway engines, ferries and the coal-fired power station on Kings Wharf and of raw sewage spewing into the harbour. Since then technology has advanced and we are prosperous enough to afford to look after the environment. Economic growth has benefited us and the environment.

In our prosperous little world, it is all too easy to forget the billions of people who are still scratching a living from subsistence agriculture, suffering chronic illnesses and dying young from entirely preventable diseases. In these countries populations are growing rapidly. History shows us that as a population becomes more prosperous, the reproduction rate declines dramatically because people realise that they no longer need to have lots of children to ensure that a few will survive to support them in their old age.

A primary driver of the economic growth they need is access to affordable energy, electricity and communications. Energy frees people from the burden of manual labour and electricity frees them from the need to cut down forests for firewood. It also provides them with television and cellphones which are a major factor in lifting the economies of many developing countries.

Even in New Zealand, any attempt to stop the economy growing would have a disproportionate effect on the poor and those who have retired.

What we need is economic growth using the best available technology to ensure that goods are supplied at the lowest cost and that energy is used efficiently and wisely. This is what engineers do.

The best definition of an engineer is "someone who can do for 20 cents what any fool can do for a dollar". Another is "the art of directing the great forces of power in nature for the use and convenience of man".

It is widely believed that the world is running out of resources. In fact, we now have more resources available to us than ever before.

When the steam engine was first invented, people were worried that, quite soon, the world would run out of coal.

Now the world is known to have more coal than it is ever likely to use. Two or three years ago, the United States and the United Kingdom were expecting to import more and more gas. The shale gas revolution has turned this around. For the past 100 years, the reserves of oil have steadily increased. For the same 100 years people have been predicting the imminent arrival of "peak oil". They have been wrong every time. Even if oil did start to run out, the immense gas reserves in offshore "methane ice" could easily be turned into liquid fuels.

For electricity, nuclear power and, in particular, reactors burning thorium, promise us a virtually unlimited supply of electricity at a reasonable price.

And for those who believe it is too dangerous to contemplate, recent research into radiation exposure shows, quite clearly, that exposure to low levels of radiation is not harmful and may even give some immunity to cancer. The radiation limits for nuclear power stations could be raised by a factor of 200 without the slightest risk. It would reduce the cost of nuclear power and change the public perception of the danger of nuclear power.

In spite of all the predictions, the world is not running out of food. With the efficient use of irrigation, improved plants and reduction in the enormous wastage that occurs in developing countries, the world could easily feed a much larger population.

I believe that one of the biggest dangers facing the world is well-meaning people who believe that the world is running out of resources, that technology will no longer continue to make our lives better and better and that economic growth is incompatible with the environment. If these people carry the day, our grandchildren will suffer.

The best way of future proofing this country, and the world, is rational and efficient development of our resources to support the economic growth we need so we can continue to do our best for people and the environment. It will also advance the date when the world population stops growing.

New Zealand is located in the "Ring of Fire" zone around the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Leyland doesn't even mention how earthquake prone his country is, and he says "full steam ahead" with nuclear power.

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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: "Chinese Are Going for the Safe, Thorium Reactors, and They Are Doing Mankind a Favour"

The Telegraph's commentator also thinks, along with many nuke proponents that inhabit the world, that "there has never been a verifiable death" in the West from the nuclear power. (I suppose he doesn't include Russia as part of the West.)

Right.

In his own words, from The Telegraph 3/20/2011 right before he headed off to the Mayan Highlands:

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima’s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.

This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.

If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia’s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West’s entrenched consumption.

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”, you could say.

Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.

Ah. China is known for its safety records for sure.

“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.

“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.

“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”

Then why aren't the nuke reactors in the world thorium-based, by now? Evans-Pritchard says it's because thorium cannot be made into weapons:

US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.

The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs.

Evans-Pritchard further says western-lifestyle needs nuclear power, and no one has died from nuclear power:

I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.

We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.

And his parting shot:

So the Chinese will soon lead on this thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.

This is my last column for a while. I am withdrawing to the Mayan uplands.

As the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident has made abundantly clear to many people (clearly Evans-Pritchard is not one of them), it is the human errors that make up the accident - from the design of the reactor and the plant, fitting the pipes that don't fit, hiding the condition of the degrading parts and equipments and structures and the regulatory agency who helps the operator to hide them, to name only a few.

It doesn't quite matter how safe thorium is, when the most dangerous and unpredictable component of all is the humans.

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