While I agree that the prospects for bio-diesel (and bio-ethanol) to replace petroleum are limited, I don't think that we are at crisis point yet nor that CNG/LNG conversion is the only option.

Petroleum may be replaced by synthetic hydrocarbons from other fossil fuel sources. Both coal liquefaction and gas to liquids technologies are proven. This would avoid the need to convert the current vehicle fleet and preserve the use of the current distribution infrastructure. As I'm sure you're aware both CNG and LNG have decided disadvantages when compared to liquid hydrocarbons. CNG has lower energy capacity and requires high pressure containment. LNG leaks methane constantly.

For commuter use I think you underestimate the potential of battery electric vehicles.

David, it's important to look at our overall power systems as a system in need of serious improvement. Batteries are only one storage medium, and several alternatives are actively advancing, like the ultra capacitor, which is environmentally excellent.

But the overall power grid benefits in two ways from EVs, no matter how they store energy: a) regenerative braking retuns about 15% of a vehicle's energy of motion, thus reducing total charging load when returned to grid input, and b) EV storage offers the grid a charge/discharge choice on a moment-moment basis. That's extremely valuable to utilities.

So folks like Betterplace.com are actually radio-linking batteries and their cars to control centers that work with the customer to assure charge for trips, but also offers the utility to consume or source power on demand, for a fee. Thus this particular business owns the battery, leases one a car & a charging/planning service and sells the utility the flexibility to access the company's batteries real time.

The entire storage industry isn't simply focussed on chemical batteries, partly because of the reasons you mention. How mobile & stationary storage systems will shake out over the next years is up in the air. But, we know it will be a great asset.

Remember, today, of every $ going into gas tanks, about 70 cents goes out the exhaust pipe as waste heat. That's an easy target to better with electric drive.

Alex Cannara: "... it's important to look at our overall power systems ...". Indeed it is. There are inefficiencies in both generation and distribution. Using the energy where its produced (as in burning fuel in a boring internal combustion engine) is far more efficient than generating, distributing and storing it, then extracting it from storage into a lossy motor.

Alex Cannara: "But the overall power grid benefits in two ways from EVs". I reckon it would benefit most if the extra load is not imposed on it.

Alex Cannara: "... regenerative braking ...". Electricity is not the only way to implement regenerative braking. Truck manufacturers have been using hydraulic accumulators for some time and there are very interesting developments in pneumatics. Not as sexy or profitable as electrics, but more economic and, using energy produced in the vehicle, more efficient.

On the pneumatics, a collection of technologies, including diesel engines, programmable electro-hydraulic valve systems and carbon fibre pressure tanks combine to produce a surprisingly efficient, light weight and simple vehicle. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/02/air-hybrid-cars-electric-cheaper

David, the true advantage of electric charge/drive/regeneration is that it avoids the inevitabilities of thermodynamics in the fuel-combustion, or hydraulic compression/expansion mechanisms. Even simple hydraulic storage & release is less than 80% efficient, in to out. Pneumatic storage is no better.

So, yes, we all do waste over 1/2 of what we generate, so we need to take care with choosing efficient devices and that leads directly to electrical/mechanical storage, not fluid-based systems. Even pumped storage of water in hydro reservoirs is at best 75% efficient. The ideas of compressed-air storage underground is no better, and worse when the loss of compression heat is accounted for.

So devices like the ultra capacitor for purely electric storage, or the flywheel, for electromechanical storage operate naturally at far higher efficiencies. Large flywheels are already used in generator halls in hydro or other power plants. With electric drive/generation netting >90% efficiencies each, the use of compressible./combustible fluids is just too wasteful.

Alex, your capacity for denial is evidently infinite.

Alex Cannara: "... the true advantage of electric charge/drive/regeneration is ..." and the inevitable disadvantages have already been pointed out.

Alex Cannara: "... devices like the ultra capacitor for purely electric storage, or the flywheel, for electromechanical storage ..." don't avoid the disadvantages already mentioned.

Infinite? Really? From a finite set of statements, you jump to "infinite"? C'mon David.

If you were an engineer or scientist, you'd choose better language and demonstrate technical knowledge, rather than plain bias.
.

Alex Cannara: "Infinite? Really?"
Those of us with an adequate command of English realise that a thing can be evident without being so. Your difficulty might explain your inability to interpret the ZCA 2020 report.

So David, you get to not read what someone else suggests, and not study your own submissions well, eh?

The ZCA report is clearly written with vendors ready & willing to sell what they can to Australia, even if some of what they offer makes no sense, long or short term.

For example, you do realize the thermodynamic inefficiency of CST (concentrated solar thermal) right? The ZCA report states for CST:

"...CST module consists of a net 217 MWe turbine, with a mirror field and molten salt system sized to provide thermal energy for 17 hours of storage. Aircooling of the power cycle is used"

It's great to see molten salt, just as in MSRs. It's great to see air cooling, just as in MSRs with Brayton-Cycle inert-gas turbines.

It's not so great to do the math for only "217MWe" from from a "mirror field" that only gets 1kW/sq meter -- 217MWe corresponds to a peak solar input of about 600MW thermal. That, assuming 100% efficient heat transfer from sun to mirror to salt, means at least an array of 200 acres or 600,000 sq meters, absolute minimum -- not counting maintenance paths, roads, transmission & control structures & rights of way..

And that peak input only occurs when the sun is in range of the mirrors, so let's be generous and give it the impossible benefit of 10 hours. The system claims 17 hours of thermal storage, but is not able to deliver 217MWe for that period. So they attempt honesty by adding:

"These solar thermal plants are capable of running at a 72% annual capacity factor"

This means that 28% of the time, something else will be needed to make up for the lack of this 200+ acre, distant power source -- that's 102 days per year this remarkably expensive, high maintenance, weather-influenced, thermodynamically inefficient, loss inducing "module" will need replacement.

Well, what works in 200+ acres, 22/7.(90% capacity factor), weather independent, air cooled and thermally efficient?

Oh yes a 2GWe nuke, like any current installation, or, on half the acreage, a 2GWe MSR. Let's see, 217MWe 72% of the time, or 2000MWe 90% of the time? Hmmm. When electricity is being sold for $, what should a utility customer choose? And when a nuke can be licensed for 40-60 years, using the same salt technology, why bother with low-yield land-consuming fleet of high-maintenance mirrors to get 1/10 the power and no valuable products?

These are the ffacts that the Chinese & others, even the Aussies working with the Czechs, are well aware of. The ZCA goals are laudable. The co-option by some vendors for some products will be costly. Just hope they don't start planning gas lines to these CST "modules" to keep them going at night.
;]
Then there's the wind suggestion -- even less efficient, more land hungry and more environmentally damaging. Wind shares all the inefficiency, loss and variability with CST, and more. Maintenance is high -- 20-year life as well and limited wind-speed operation, as the report admits. The capacity factor falls to about 25%, and each 7.5MWe peak windmill requires over 10 acres of cleared space. That makes the land co-option so large, and the yield so low, that they admit in the report that "balancing power" will always be needed. They choose Denmark as an example, but fail to reveal that Denmark needs 300MW of 24/7 capacity ready each day, in case wind speeds are off from the prior day forecast, by under 1m/s. Maybe Aussie winds are more regular and friendly? But maybe also, after installing thousands of 200 meter high windmills over Australian scenic lands, the result China is already experiencing will occur -- loss of average wind speed to climate change -- oops.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/a-less-mighty-wind
www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/us/21tttransmission.html?_r=1&hpw

Kinda hard to dig up those 400-500-ton wind towers made in Korea with US or Aussie coal. Kinda hard to dig out those 1000 cu meter concrete foundations, made with fossil-fuelled limestone kilns, mining and aggregate crushing, transporting & mixing, eh? Now there's a Carbon deficit for ya. Indeed, a windmill requires about 700 tons of fossil-fuel-processed materials just for the basic structure. The generator needs rare-earth magnet materials -- very expensive -- from China (who controls the world market). So again, why wind power? You can click on the unreadable graphic in the 1st link below to see how many windmills must operate at full capacity factor to make up for a single reactor...

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012/02/09/wind-nuclear-infographic/
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/03/uptime-downtime_07.html

So indeed, David, I've read the ZCA plan. It's necessary. It has good ideas, and it has some seriously bad, long-term choices, some similar to those we made in Calif. over 30 years ago.

By the way Figure 2.26 doesn't properly document either solar PV or nuclear life-cycle emissions. The PV figures are out of date for current, local solar panels that run 20% efficient (& increasing well before 2020) and have a cost of under 1kWHr per Watt & $1US/Watt. .The nuclear life-cycle cost is based on data that doesn't reflect the new designs, like AP-1000, or AREVA designs.

So the figure's representation of wind costs doesn't properly document the full 700-ton/MW impact, nor does it include all land costs, operating losses & the ~20-year generator life. This appears to be the same discredited comparison chart used by Jacobson (who is referenced), who admitted his numbers for nukes were flimsy in personal conversation -- he & I have discussed this error in public (he's 2 miles away). Some people just love wind, no matter the facts.
;]
Maybe ask the ZCA folks to read some of the honest appraisals of alternative energy sources (MacKay, Etherington...) -- you too, David. Right now it seems Australia has some ardent vendors suiting them.

I was attempting to get you to actually read the ZCA2020 report and honestly consider the possibilities. I've apparently failed.

Your resources are evidently orders of magnitude greater than those of this lone, retired, rural Australian, yet you fail to make a convincing case for the technology which, I presume, you're paid to promote.

Why might that be? Could you have violated some fundamental of communication? Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it well: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Lengthy posts and multiple links can bully and intimidate, but they don't communicate. If your case is righteous, it won't need anything of the sort.

Priceless, David! You have someone who can do a technical analysis of something you don't seem to understand, but push, then when the analysis conflicts with your bias, you play victim! Really, David?

You think: "multiple links can bully and intimidate, but they don't communicate" is a defense for you not doing what you asked another to do -- study?

You don't realize you defrock yourself of facts when you play the victim of disagreements you don't bother to study? Really?

As your seemingly favorite Antoine sad too: "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

As a child of science & engineering, I now understand your tiresomeness. But, you must understand that I've no interest in convincing you of anything. My concern is that others not be misled by your misinformation.

Like the hat, though, David -- carefully maintained & posed. The Crocodile Dundee look goes well up here, always.

Almost forgot, your hoped-for check that "the technology which, I presume, you're paid to promote" is what I've talked about is as incorrect as your other assumptions -- no $ interest in any particular technologies. Just responsibility to my fellow humans & offspring. The latter will be paying for any faddish mistakes we 'adults' make.

Alex Cannara: "My concern is that others not be misled by your misinformation." As is mine that they not be misled by yours.
Alex Cannara: "Like the hat, though, David -- carefully maintained & posed. The Crocodile Dundee look goes well up here, always."
Alex, I live on the land. What for you might be a frivolous fashion statement is for me necessary working clothing. As for the pose, I propped a camera on the bed of my truck and triggered it a few times with the remote, then picked the image I thought looked best.
Alex Cannara: "... no $ interest in any particular technologies ...".
Your behaviour speaks otherwise. While I wouldn't dream of calling anyone a liar, I do consider your terminology strategically inexact.
Are you really one person, or just a name used by a nuclear industry advocacy group?

"highest percentage of renewable energy use include Norway, Sweden, Finland. A major contributor to renewable energy in these countries is the use of wood"

I don't know about that but I do know that both Sweden and Norway get lots of power from hydro. And Sweden has a lot of nuclear power, as does Finland (and will for a long time if they manage to finish the Areva EPR at Olkiluoto, of course at twice the original price estimate).

In any case those countries are notable for having large land mass with vast forests and small populations. If they gain a small fraction of their power from wood it is probably a sustainable practice not possible in Australia. Worse, the timber and forestry industries have shown themselves incapable of restraint. Give them an inch and they will take a forest or two, or three.

We need to find a sustainable solution and forest timber can only ever be a tiny part of that.

Ah yes, old story. Right now I am seriously contemplating putting my neck back in the noose, or on the chopping block as the case may be (and with your encouragement), by undertaking a thesis on the political economy of landuse in these matters.

Some of it is now old Centre-Peripery Theory, all that stuff, yet the feeling I get from the 'Centre' lately is more concerned with 'you guys out there on the periphery come up with a good plan' that, as usual, they can get past their opposition while at the same time deflecting blame.

Over here, Brendan Grylls stirred things up nicely by demanding that a fair share of mining royalties be invested regionally not just in the one big city with its tall buildings and transport infrastucture. What's most interesting to me right now is that he's a flour miller by trade.

You're right, and I agree, I did my boyhood apprenticeship many years ago as an auto electrician and mechanic (my grandfather was an engineer as well as running a 12,000 acre sheep station), it's not as if we don't have the skills out there. That's not the issue.

So long as we prosper it doesn't matter if the truckies and investors make a few quid - enterprise is a key driver of these things - and in how people are distributed across the landscape.

It's all this profligate centralised mass consumption demanding that we unquestioningly serve it that gets me.

First, not subsidies to 'sustainable' technology but strict energy audits would help a lot . . . .

For biofuels, I reckon it's a mistake to think in terms of crops. Concentrate instead on byproducts or what might otherwise go to waste. One obvious candidate is sewage.

For example, quite a while back, Sydney "solved" its sewage disposal problem by moving the outfalls several kilometres out to sea. Vast amounts of nutrients, effectively polluting the ocean. As RFC 1925 says: "It is easier to move a problem ... than it is to solve it"

If memory serves, a couple of years back, the US navy was running ships on algal biofuels. Eurojet was doing the same with jet aircraft. Why not put the nutrients to work, growing fuel? No land required, just add bioreactors to the sewerage system. Reduces the load on the ocean at the same time.

As far as I know, no community makes productive use of all of its sewage. That's just one example that comes to mind; I'm sure you can think of others.

For transport, fuels that are liquid at standard temperature and pressure are more practical than those that are gas. Heavier liquids store more energy per unit of volume than lighter ones. They also produce less vapour pollution.

Like batteries, nuclear energy is a solution that's arguably worse than the problem. I know too little of alternative fuel cycles to comment on them, but no nuclear technology is entirely free of radioactive waste. If memory serves, nuclear also suffers from extremely long lead-times.

The ZCA 2020 report http://beyondzeroemissions.org/zero-carbon-australia-2020 showed that Australia could go carbon-free, at least in stationary energy, in less time than it would take to commission a single nuclear reactor.

Actually, nuclear fission is the retrieval of electromechanical energy store in heavy nuclei billions of years before the solar system, bt supernovae shocks, giant young star's electromagnetic turbulence, etc. Nuclear fission is indeed like battery discharging, but without the dangerous chemistry -- sounds odd, eh?

So retrieval of that energy can be done without much waste and, in fact, the wastes we now have because of the 1946 solid-fuel & water cycle, can be consumed for additional energy. The inventors of the present reactor design using water for heat transfer, knew better & safer systems were needed and with help of some Nobel winners did that at ORNL in the 1960s. Since the designs didn't make Plutonium for the Cold War, though, they got little funding.

But, the Chinese, etc. are back in, using all our now-public R&D and cruising toward deployments in 2020.

Ma Nature provides us with remarkably safe & compact energy, if we listen to her. Fission yields ~3GW/kg -- 1 ton of Uranium per year replaces 13 million barrels of oil. A ton of U fits in a box 1/2 meter on a side.

Rather than solid fission fuel, Nature allows us to use liquid salts which are extremely stable over wide ranges of temperature & radiation.

Salts expand with temp, so a reactor slows down if it gets too hot, & speeds up if the thermal load takes more heat away -- it throttles to load.

Liquid salt has a 1000C range of operation, compared to water's 100C range, so no pressure is needed and no steam/hydrogen explosions are possible.

Liquid fluoride salts also allow breeding of fission fuel (Uranium) inside the reactor itself, as needed, via cheap, safe Thorium. A handful of Thorium per hour runs such a reactor to serve 1 million people. A handful of Thorium runs your & my lives forever, including transportation.

The use of liquid salt means more efficient heat transfer to generators or processes. It also means leaks simply solidify on the floor as stable salt. If the reactor overheats, or there's a huge quake/power failure, the drain plug opens and Nature's gravity empties the core into storage underground, where fission stops and the salt just sits until the system upstairs is ready to have it pumped back up. The salt reactor at ORNL was shut down that way in 1969. Its salt has been 'downstairs' ever since, bothering no one.

The use of liquid salt means any waste gasses just bubble out and are stored or sold (a salt reactor can ,make $4 million of Tritium per year). It also means that all the products of fission that we don't want to pull out for sale or efficiency, can remain as salts inside the reactor, getting about 7% more energy (decay heat). So there's no "spent fuel" waste.

Starting with Thorium (chloride or fluoride) means very little long-lived wastes (Plutonium, Americium...) are made (though Am is used in smoke detectors), and such a reactor would take 30 years to fill a garbage can with stuff to bury, while serving a city. So 30 x 13,000,000 barrels of oil weren't burned, thus not producing megatons of CO2, etc. And, Nature gave us all that power from 30 tons of Thorium, which is a waste product of rare-earth mining and costs 1/100 what oil or coal or gas would.

So you can see why folks around the world are returning to the safe nuclear designs pioneering at US ORNL over 40 years ago. This type of design is termed "walk-away safe" -- Fukushima could sure have used them.

Yes, very true Alex. My friend was a key researcher in the crops for biofuel field. The oil contents or biomass production was often too low or too costly (nutrients, water, etc) for it to be worthwhile. Oils were also very price sensitive.

There are potential biofuels, they could be a source of fuels. But I'm not sure that it is a good idea to displace agricultural food production to do it. I'm also not a fan of using trees (wouldn't waste be chipped for paper?). I'm also not a fan of straws being used either, it is very costly in soil nutrition (my WA agricultural bias, with our nutritionally poor soils).

You speak of fuel wastes, but are they the only radioactive byproducts of nuclear energy?

Given that we have cleaner alternatives, why take the risks? Why wait so long, when the cleaner alternatives can be implemented within 10 years?

I'm afraid, as usual, the advocates of Thorium reactors are getting carried away with exaggeration and understatement of the time and problems.
With all the talk of molten salt reactors the only thorium nuclear plant being planned is a 300 MW one that will use heavy-water cooling, in India. And it will not begin construction until 2016-2017.

And it remains mostly press releases which in the world of nuclear power projects is worth......

But it does point up the problems, and the weaknesses of the advocates. It is always so neat and easy to design the perfect reactor on paper. The real world always turns out to be so much more difficult. It is almost impossible to introduce a bunch of new designs in one step and with nuclear, each step takes an age. (When, if ever, will that Indian reactor actually go online? 2025?). For people like me, who are not against doing the research, this always leads to the conclusion that all those wonderful advances in nuclear technology that never seem to eventuate, have such lead times (and no certain outcome) that by then we will have conquered true safe renewables. And hence, nuclear remains a distraction. (And if you haven't been paying attention, the nuclear "renaissance" is in trouble all over the globe, from the UK, Czech R., USA etc.; see http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/nuclear-industry-finds-new-plants-are-not-so-cheap-55124)

And though thorium reactor waste is less dangerous, it still persists for hundreds (rather than thousands) of years. From our current civilization's point of view, is that really much different?

It is of course almost beside the point what the cost of the thorium is. It is the humungous capital cost of nuclear generators that is the killer, and in the democracies has made them almost impossible to finance. (France's entire system is state funded and note that Hollande has the policy to reduce the contribution of nuclear to the grid from 75% to 50%.) And the fact that it takes ages to build thus that capital is deployed years and years before it produces a return--a very big difference with high-capital cost renewables.

David, the reality is that for mass generation, especially for process heat & power, output above 100MW is commonly needed at an industrial/military site, large ships, or for a remote city. So while we know local solar can meet peak daytime loads in communities, there will always remain the need for compact, 24/7 high-powered sources.

Nuclear reactors have always been such sources, but were limited in technology by the artifacts & politics of the Cold War -- essentially, all US & most western-nations reactors are direct descendents of the USS Nautilus' light-water reactor. One, in fact, was "beached" by Adm. Rickover in 1957 in Pennsylvania to be our 1st civilian nuclear station. The fuel infrastructure & industrial know how for that class of reactor was well established and just kept on going, around the world.

The reason for the 1962 report that JFK requested was to ensure newer, longer-lasting fuekl cycles could eliminate combustion generation and light-water reactors by about 2000. But, despite newer, more efficient designs done in the '60s, our commercial nuclear-power deployments just continued with what remains a 1946 design -- enriched Uranium heating water for steam turbines.

The reality of 'renewables' is that only local solar is efficient enough (in all respects) to be worth deploying quickly. With improving storage, as via dispatchable EV charge/discharge (betterplace.com), we can indeed get about 1/2 the power needed with minimal emissions. Beyond that, nuclear offers thousands of years of 24/7 reliability, even relatively local siting via newer (e.g., DoE Gen-IV) designs.

This reality is why many countries are looking at building any type of reactor as fast as possible -- far easier to get >50MW/acre 24/7 that way. (current 20% solar PV is 0.6MW/acre with ~25% duty cycle, thus it takes >300 times as many acres of PV to come close to present nuclear, and that doesn't even count storage).

The reality is that if we'd indeed proceeded from the Seaborg advice in 1962 (http://tinyurl.com/6pcrrv6) global emissions problems would be about 1/2 what they are, and headed down rather than up.

Tim (& Alex), I would tend to agree about conventional approaches to bioenergy crops, that is growing oil for biodiesel or grain for ethanol in regard their direct carbon benefits, but there can be other reasons to do it.

In terms of trees paper is not necessarily a higher use than renewable fuel in all localities. Pulp generally has to be within 80-100km of a port, even if all tree waste was suitable for this purpose, which it isn't.

Not all agricultural production is about food either, there has always been fiber as well and plenty of areas where food production is marginal but which could grow other crops, especially on longer rotations. In many "good" farming areas 15% or higher could be given over to integrated biodiversity/bioenergy plantings without impacting overall farm productivity due to other benefits to micro climate and housing for predator insects and birds.

In regard to straw again I might agree, if your silly enough to just burn it, but if you gasify it then you can control the process so that 15-20% is left as charcoal residue. Testing done on our chars produced in this fashion show the inorganic nutrients are retained (they don't gasify) with only the nitrogen compounds reduced. This char returned to the paddock potentially has other benefits not just nutrient recycling.

I reckon a Thorium powered tractor is still a ways off, though it might give some novel weed control strategies if and when it does arrive. In the meantime we continue in our imperfect world doing the best we can with the tools that are real.

"if we'd indeed proceeded from the Seaborg advice in 1962 "

But the reality is that "we" didn't.

And the capital cost problem of nuclear doesn't change significantly with thorium. In fact it has got worse which is why so many of those nukes planned just a few years ago are being abandoned--it is unfinanciable. Even the >$32 billion of loan guarantees by the Obama administration has not advanced the industry's plans there.

Michael, first we need grasp the great variety. When you mention Thorium & the Indians using heavy water, you're not talking molten salt. That version of Indian R&D is indeed one way to breed fissile Uranium in aa reactor, but the solid fuel itself is a problem for efficiency & waste -- not as bad as in present, enriched Uranium, solid-fuelled reactors, but a real problem nonetheless. The Indians thus include a fuel disassembly & reprocessing facility as part of such designs. The heavy water use just makes the management of neutron efficiency better, at some expense.

The Indians also have an MSR project. But it is the Chinese (perhaps a few others) who are committed to bring Thorium MSRs to prototype by 2020.

The molten-salt idea originated in the 1950s with Nobellist Wigner. And the idea for breeding fissile fuel inside the reactor itself (from Thorium or 238Uranium) came from Nobellist Seaborg in the 1940s, so there really isn't anything new about those concepts.

Fuel breeding actually occurs all the time in present, light-water reactors, because they make Plutonium from some of their 238Uranium within their solid fuel. This was the path to weapons in the Cold War, so the path from Thorium, which makes very little Plutonium was not well funded.

The Molten-salt designs were built at Oak Ridge in the 1960s and run successfully. The 6MW MSR there was started in 1965 and ran until 1969, perfectly safely, while its chemistry & efficiency were researched. In fact, its shut down in 1969 could have been done by simply turning off the building's electric power, so the solidified salt drain plug would melt and dump all the salt into storage tanks underground. Those tanks still safely contain that salt, 43 years later. Too bad our R&D funding for such reactors faded -- Fukushima would not have happened.

In order to talk about costs for nuclear power, one has to examine each reactor type and its construction requirements as well as fuel cycle economics.

MSRs run unpressurized, have only the fuel in them that's needed for that moment and provide more power more efficiently, since their salts have 1000C temp ranges, as compared to water's 100C range. Since MSRs have no water to cause steam explosions or hydrogen evolution & combustion, there's no need for huge containment structures.

Since MSRs shutdown via gravity drain, there's no emergency power requirement and no emergency cooling systems.

All of the above features make construction & operation far cheaper than present reactor designs, even including what are called "Small Modular Reactors", which still use solid furl cooled by water or other liquid. Of course, another cost advantage is that we already built a few and worked out many operational details, from the stainless steel plumbing & core design to the chemistry used to maintain salt and remove desired products, like medical isotopes, and pollutants, like Xenon.

There's good reason the Chinese have been the number 1 visitors to ORNL since 2008.

On the natural concern for waste, having liquid fuel means everything that's useful for generating power can remain in the salt forever. Fission products that aren't taken out for sale, etc. remain in as Fluorides or Chlorides and add about 7% to the reactor's output energy just from their decay heat.

With solid fuels, not only do the pollutants stay in, but so do other fission products -- the fuel becomes unusable after about 4 years. This is the "spent fuel" burden of present plants, and the 7% of operational heat that comes from decay is there even after shutdown, so that's where the backup cooling systems are required for present reactors and their spent fuel ponds. After ~6 years, spent fuel can simply be stored in air-cooled casks.

With the MSR, there's no spent fuel..In fact, converting existing spent fuel waste to salts allows them to be used in an MSR and so destroyed.

Adding Thorium salt in as the long-term fuel gets us away from making Plutonium & other long-lived wastes. Again, these can remain in the reactor for decades and be mostly used up. Every atom that can be fissioned or decay inside the reactor adds to its power efficiency. So MSRs are more like gas or coal plants in having high thermal efficiencies. In fact, with noble-gas or CO2 in the turbine stages (Brayton Cycle), MSRs indeed match the best combustion plant's efficiency of about 50%. Present reactors are more like 33% efficient in converting heat to electricity.

The MSR's good heat (>700C) allows making truly neutral fuels from CO2 & water -- diesel, jet fuel...

Then there's the fuel cost. Any fission reactor consumes about 1/2 kg of fissile (Uranium/Plutonium) per hour to serve >1 million people. That's a golf-ball-sized amount. If we use solid fuel, we have to put about 2 times as many fissile atoms in it as we would in liquid fuel, because the polluting fission products (Xenon, Hafnium...) stay in the solid fuel, ruining neutron economics.

Liquid fuels allow simple, 24/7 removal of such undesirables. Thus a 1GWe MSR has a ton of fissile needed per year, while a solid-fuelled station needs to be loaded with over twice that amount of fissile, of which only 1/2 will be consumed before the fuel must be removed to the spent pile. So the cost of fueling an MSR with Uranium is a few million $, while present, solid-fuelled machines need over $10 million to load up. Using thorium, at ~$30,000 per ton, makes fuel cost negligible, especially since yearly fission products net about $100 million for a Thorium MSR (LFTR).

Some medical isotopes are unique to the Thorium-233Uranium breeding process, so add even further economic advantage. A LFTR would presently generate ~650 million $ per year electricity & ~ 100 million $ in critical isotopes, all from $30k of Thorium salt. And, it would eliminate the emissions equivalent to burning 13 million barrels of oil.

Since Thorium is a waste product of rare-earth mining (for magnet materials, etc.), it's 4 times as common as Uranium and needs no special mining -- 1 rare-earth mine in the US produces about 5000 tons of Th per year -- enough to power the whole world's electricity needs. The beaches on India's west coast are largely Monazite sand, which is about 4% Thorium.

So the Nobellists & other scientists & engineers who advised JFK on what to do in 1962 actually knew something. But, like the QWERTY vs Dvorak keyboards, we just didn't quite all get the message.

Feel free to swing by Loyola U. in Chicago:in a couple of weeks...
www.thoriumenergyalliance.com

Or, Shanghai in Octorber...
www.itheo.org/articles/announcing-thec12-shanghai

Some refs...
http://tinyurl.com/4t5ojde
http://tinyurl.com/7hatm2b
http://asia.iop.org/cws/article/news/47111
http://tinyurl.com/6vmaljn
http://vimeo.com/39052604
http://tinyurl.com/8ynwcqw
www.thoriumremix.com/2011
http://tinyurl.com/8xmso5v (for the more advanced)

Trying a 3rd time....
I like the Thorium tractor idea! Actually, the first MSR at ORNL was designed for a plane -- The Aircraft Reactor Project, It ran red hot (was named Fireball), was less than 6ft in size, and generated about 10MW for the 11 hours they dared run it.

The Air Force thought it should have nuke planes because the Navy had nuke subs & carriers, so the MSR researchers took the $, knowing a plane that needed shielding would keep any nuke plane stuck to the ground. Then came ICBMs and funding had to come from elsewhere, for the later designs.

I'm not much for any biofuel, because over 50% of their thermal energy in some combustion engine, only to produce emissions which need more cleanup anyway. And why waste the land, water, nutrients, tractor fuel (no Th), etc? Local solar, efficient storage & use, and safe nuclear are all we need. Free the land!

Alex Cannara: "... while we know local solar can meet peak daytime loads in communities, ...". Read the report: http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Report_v1.pdf

The real reality is that nuclear is uneconomic, cannot be commissioned quickly and, as far as the technologies you promote, pie in the sky.

Alex Cannara: "... safe nuclear ..." which is where you lose the plot. Like clean coal, safe nuclear is a myth.

" When you mention Thorium & the Indians using heavy water, you're not talking molten salt."

Err, that was my point. The ONLY thorium reactor anywhere near actual construction is heavy water.

Everything else is hot air, like most of the last 50 years in the nuclear power industry.

And, at this stage of the game, you want to take heart in maybe a ...prototype.. within the next decade or so. Do you know when the first fast breeder prototype was built? No, neither do I because it was so many decades ago I cannot remember (possibly the 50s and no later than the 60s). But I do vaguely remember when France's Superphenix, almost the only one to deliver actual power to the grid, closed down permanently --in the late 90s I think--after an abominable record.

Alex, glad you liked the tractor, You might also like a lovely hoax article sent to me by a friend concerning "secret" steam powered Halifax bombers in WWII running on coal. I was disappointed though that the CSIRO over here didn't pick up the idea and propose Solar Thermal Arrays as part of the fuselage, heating steam coils in the wing structures instead of coal so Quantas could revolutionize passenger air travel...

Of course converted thorium powered bombers might be even better since they would have the added advantage of being self warming to open up less congested polar routes, apart from not having potentially embarrassing sunset curfews.

I have done enough research to visualize that one day micro nuclear reactors may well be possible, but not this day. I do not inherently oppose Thorium power, though the numbers you quote in your economics would have seen the technology already on the ground beyond pilot scale if real. Both the Japanese and Germans (to name just two) have the nuclear technical capacity, need and no mandate for military grade by-products. I see no concerted national effort from them in this direction.

By the way our biomass tech has been costed at $2/watt, despite the inherent thermal inefficiencies, which are only wasted if you don't use them in other ways, and is viable at 8-10c kWhr. Directly competitive with grid power from coal and much better than wind or solar. I can visualize EV's recharged from this source taking over quite a few on farm transport needs, and within this decade, not several of them. Tractors can be powered direct with their own gasifier, the Swedes had 20,000 of these running in the WWII.

My real problem with your solution in a rural context is that it provides no significant employment, no income for farmers or local communities and has none of the flow on environmental benefits that come from managing the land better. "Free the land" catch-cry's ignore the reality that for the most part the damage that has been done will not fix itself.

Of course there are limits to what this can achieve at national scales in % terms of power generation and it is not a be all solution, but it should be part of a raft of other approaches. Whether nuclear should also be part of this I will reserve my own judgment on pending the proven demonstration of a commercial scale system that delivers on its promises, including intractable waste disposal.

Finally though my biggest concern with your advocacy is that it enslaves us all to a narrow field of large corporates with the technical capacity to provide our basic energy needs, and we all know how benign and socially responsible they can be.

To cut to the chase, no form of nuclear power has a rightful place on this planet. Off-planet, where the inevitable toxic byproducts may be disposed of in the nearest star, the story might be different. Even then, I fear we'll discover that dumping junk in stars is no less hazardous in the longer term than doing it in oceans.

If you honestly believe that your favourite nuclear technology produces no hazardous byproducts, then try snuggling up to a used reactor vessel. Warm, it might be; healthy, it wouldn't.

Actually, if you compare all forms of power generation, nuclear has been the safest fior decades, as the Swiss & others have found...
http://tinyurl.com/42wvr9l and http://tinyurl.com/3nwjboz etc.

While radioactivity sounds scary, it's really Ma Nature causing unstable atoms to gradually release internal energy and fade away to stable elements like Bismuth, Argon, etc. Mercury, lead, PCB and other dangerous chemicals almost never disappear. This is why coal plants, emitting allowed amounts of Mercury, Arsenic, etc. cause >12,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Gas exploration, delivery and use kills many every year. Oil similarly.

Civilian & naval nukes have caused 0 deaths since their rollout. And, if we account for global effects of CO2 emissions avoided, nuclear power has already saved us $ trillions. It could have saved more had the combustion industry not helped folks thinking they were environmentalists to oppose further build-outs. And, Cold War politics wanted bomb materials, so civilian reactors were not well funded.

We are our own enemies when we choose to avoid facts.

David, we likely already got how you feel. See the radiation shart here and note that nuke plants are not only safer than anything else because the Swiss said so, but because bananas & coal plants, and people (you too) radiate more... http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png

And you definitely don't want to sleep next to someone, since each of you radiate at the reate of over 4000 decays per second, mostly due to 40Potassium in bones & flesh from eating natural foods, like bananas!.

And you definitely don't want to advocate geothermal power since it ideed depnds on nuclear decay underground and releases Radon & other naties into the air.

But if you really are scared of radiation, start with coal plants. I don't know what Aussie regulators allow, but up here we have the NORM Exemption for all combustion plants. That exemption allows them to emit 100x the radioactivity that any nuke could. Isn't lobbying amazing?

So all the coal/oil/gas plant stacks here can dump out Radon, vaporized Uranium, Radium..., to their (owners) hearts' content, because those are Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials. And coal from the mine is less than 1/2 coal, the rest rock, and even after slurrying out that rock, enough is left in what's burned to emit 100x what a 1GWe nuclear-fission power plant can.

As the engineering saying goes: "You can t find a nuclear plant with a Geiger counter, but you can find a coal plant". And that doesn't even count the ash pile, which has as much Uranium, etc. as good Uranium ore.

So yes, nuclear power via fission is indeed the safest form of generation and it will be even safer with Thorium-salr machines.

Alex Cannara: "... if you compare all forms of power generation, nuclear has been the safest fior decades ...". History teaches otherwise.

Alex Cannara: "Civilian & naval nukes have caused 0 deaths since their rollout." Denial ain't just dat river in Egypt.

Alex Cannara: "We are our own enemies when we choose to avoid facts.". True.

Alex, you're losing respect.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. To me, your faith in technology that isn't even available yet is unhealthy.

As I've pointed out, we have a clean alternative that can be implemented far faster than your risky preference.

I won't comment on every point you've made as I don't have the relevant knowledge.

Burning stubble residues is not the current best practice. Stubble retention is best practice. It is still done, mainly for weed seed control as part of a rotation (so not an annual practice per paddock). As such, stubbles for chars are likely to be niche at best, usually as residues raked for weed control.

Also chars are a hit and miss proposal. Chars are different by source type and they interact differently with different soils. Thus benefits of chars are not a guarantee, in fact they can be a negative. Research has been done extensively in WA and, to quote my mentor, "if they haven't been able to make it work yet it is unlikely they will."

Crop oils for on farm fuel production probably have a place. I know there were some figures done in 2007-08 that put the break-even price at $1.20-1.30 per litre (canola and mustard were cheaper at the time). So price sensitivities will be reached soon for diesel on farm.

So you disagree with the Swiss? http://tinyurl.com/42wvr9l

And you disagree with the stats from around the world?
http://tinyurl.com/3nwjboz

My respect isn't an issue. It's only the facts. And the facts have long been on the side of Western Civilian & naval nuclear power, despite their being based on a 1946 design.

So, show us the deaths & injuries from Western nations' nuclear power, David.

Yes, David, if you read what I've said, it's long been known that there's more than enough sunlit human-structure surfaces around the world to meet peak daytime power demands with solar PV (and hot water), even at present 20%-efficiency cells. And, that efficiency is improving.

The problems remaining are efficient storage and baseload power & process heat. That latter includes desalination, which is why the Africans, Saudis, etc. are looking to new nuclear power designs.

This isn't a one-trick pony to solve emissions. But nuclear can produce more power more 24/7 quickly than any other source. This is why the Chinese are moving quickly as possible on it. Not only are emissions causing health costs in China that are a significant proportion of its GDP, China has almost no potable surface or near-surface water anymore. These are problems that need a GWe of emissions-free power rolled out every few months.

Our debt used to be 1GWe per month, to achieve 0 emissions by 2000, as advised in 1962. Now we're behind, so even 1GWe/day started up will help, but not forestall various natural disasters due to historical emissions, f which ~40% are in the sea and acidifying it to dangerous levels already. Present acidification is the highest in about 300 million years. Since world fishing yields peaked in 1994, this is a very big deal.

David Boxall: "If you honestly believe that your favourite nuclear technology produces no hazardous byproducts, then try snuggling up to a used reactor vessel. Warm, it might be; healthy, it wouldn't."
Alex Cannara: "... you definitely don't want to sleep next to someone, since each of you radiate ...".
So people are toxic, but used reactor vessels are warm and cuddly?

Alex Cannara: "This isn't a one-trick pony to solve emissions..But nuclear can produce more power more 24/7 quickly than any other source."
We evidently define "quickly" differently. If history is any guide, the ZCA 2020 proposal would be implemented faster than a single reactor could be commissioned. Nuclear is neither a necessary, nor a desirable part of the solution.

Read the report: http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Report_v1.pdf

Did read it David. So go right ahead and calculate what 3MW/acre solar availability will do for Australia's total power needs -- transport too -- for a few hours per day. And ask what denaturing so many square miles of your country will mean. And claculate reliabilities, losses, etc.

Nothing wrong with local solar. almost everythin is wrong with solar 'farming' of any sort.

Alex Cannara: "Did read it David." Honestly?
Alex Cannara: "Nothing wrong with local solar. almost everythin is wrong with solar 'farming' of any sort." I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I may be cynical but it is my opinion that most of the political support biofuels have enjoyed has been due to their capacity to act as cover for agricultural subsidies. Hence government interest in ethanol from sugarcane in Australia and from soybeans in America. I am not an expert on the subject but I understand neither is particularly suitable for the purpose. The idea of biodiesel from canola (as the industry prefers to call rapeseed) appears well adapted to that niche in the political economy.

The political problem with biodiesel from sewage fed algae is there is no sewage producers' lobby.

You imply that nobody has ever suffered health effects from nuclear power. Interesting.

"Thorium power, though the numbers you quote in your economics would have seen the technology already on the ground beyond pilot scale if real. Both the Japanese and Germans (to name just two) have the nuclear technical capacity, need and no mandate for military grade by-products. I see no concerted national effort from them in this direction."

India has placed a considerable investment in thorium technology.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html

They would probably like to make bombs from the U-233 too.