Clean electricity, cheap electricity, safe electricity

An intriguing possibility for coastal LFTR sites is to cool them by desalinating seawater. Using a simple membrane distillation process, an all-coastal LFTR fleet could produce enough drinkable water to fill Sydney Harbour every five months, while generating Australia’s 2007 power consumption. That’s half of Australia’s total drinking water consumption made independent of drought thereby putting a dent in the Murray-Darling’s problems.

How does an extra $2.4 billion a year in our collective pocket sound, as that would be the saving?

What about jobs?

That’s part of the beauty of converting existing powerplants - no one needs to lose their job. In fact, more people are needed at coal mines to tend the dedicated LFTR cores and run the coal upgrading equipment. These added jobs are at the high end of skilled and professional labour.

Yes, we need factories to build the 500 units needed to convert Australian power generation and provide process heat. Three such factories, each building 40-50 units annually, would each employ roughly 2,000 people to build the reactors, 500-600 supporting the factory, and that again for mobile crews to install the reactors. Again, this is skilled and professional work (pipefitters, electricians, engineers), with the obvious effects on the local area’s economy.

The jobs at each onshore unit simply cannot be exported, and will be around for the next two to three plant lifetimes: 250 to 300 years of highly skilled, highly paid Australian labour really kicking the economy along. Similarly for the factories - high tech, high value centres of excellence and heavy manufacturing, employing thousands of people and bringing in billions of export earnings - keeping that all onshore, benefiting Australian wallets.

This effort then places Australia in an excellent position for tens of billions of dollars in export earnings each year. Supplying and operating preassembled LFTR units, taking advantage of the Australian fleet build to form centres of excellence, keeping the Australian Safeguards Office happy.

What’s in it for me?

I thought you’d never ask (see Hargraves, R., 2009, Aim High!: Thorium energy cheaper than coal solves more than global warming, BookSurge Publishing).

Cleaner air, as fossil fired power plants are large sources of air pollution. Convert them to LFTR, and that air pollution goes away. Your health care costs also go down because your air is cleaner.

Lower energy prices follow from conversion, in two parts. First, decarbonising power generation means no carbon tax needs to be paid or emission permits need to be bought. Second, you aren’t paying for over-hyped, under-delivering “renewable” power, such as solar or wind. These have their place, but it isn't delivering reliable power for millions of ordinary Australians.

And finally, job creation. Those factories will create more than 6,000 jobs - only counting their direct effects. An entire industry will need staffing, and the education system will need to be expanded to meet the demand for qualified people.

Why haven’t I heard of this?

The LFTR was originally prototyped in 1968; the US Government ultimately pulled the plug on it because there were so many ways to produce better device-grade material, cheaper! The very reason that damned it in the USA, saves it this time around for Australia. The Americans got it off the ground, and did a lot of the basic research, while other groups, such as Professor Hideki Furukawa at the International Thorium Molten-Salt Forum in Kanagawa, Doctor Jan Uhlir at the Nuclear Research Institute Rez in Prague, and Kirk Sorenson at the University of Tennessee, have filled in gaps since. It’s up to Australia to take the LFTR beyond the speed of sound.

There have been 70,000 operational nuclear devices constructed since 1945, and not one from thorium. Yes, it is so difficult that out of the ten proliferators, none have bothered.

In summary

Using LFTR, we can:

• solve the current ETS “problem”;
• convert all our coal and natural gas powered plants, cutting their carbon emissions by 99 per cent;
• eliminate 275 million tonnes of annual emissions, forever;
• upgrade coal for export and eliminate another 55 million tonnes;
• revitalise power generation;
• quit worrying about safety - no meltdowns, boiler explosions, etc; andpower Australia while producing merely 48 tonnes of by-product per year (12 bathtubs of valuable, reusable and recyclable by-product).